Election manifestos fail to address issues: AIKF

Lovleen Bains
Doraha, April 11

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Members of the All-India Kisan Federation (AIKF) met here today at KK Kaushal Memorial Bhawan under the headship of Hakam Singh Manana.

Prem Singh Bhangu, president of the AIKF, and Zora Singh, state general secretary, while addressing the meeting denounced the election manifestos of the BJP and Congress.

They said the manifestos said had failed to address their demands — complete waiver of loan given to farmers and agriculture workers and the implementation of the Swaminathan Commission report in toto.

They said some false promises have again been made, without fulfilling those made in the previous election, with the ill motive of garnering votes of farmers.

They demanded that the promises made in the manifestoes be made legally enforceable and the parties be made accountable.

“If the farming community and its demands are overlooked by the government in power and the government to be, what else remains behind? The sons of the soil have been crying for their right dues. The government seems to have more important issues at hand before it finally comes to the real count of farmer suicides and ponder over the same,” shared the members of the federation.

The meeting decided to send 35 delegates for attending the all-India conference of the AIKF going to be held at Warrangal (Telangana) on May 28-29, 2019, which will be preceded by the state conference of the AIKF being held at Rajpura on May 5.

It was decided that the agitation for the return of 533 acres unutilised land acquired by the SIEL, Rajpura, way back in 1994 will be intensified in the second week of May.

The meeting passed the resolution for announcing the remunerative support price of all agriculture produce as per Dr MS Swaminathan’s formula, ensuring market of the produce, social security of Rs 10,000 to all farmers and agriculture workers who attain the age of 60 years, crop insurance be made without recovering premium from farmers, canal irrigation to the total cultivable land, immediate payment of compensation of damaged paddy crop be made and the credit to farmers be given at zero rate of interest.