Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Monday said that the farmers in the state were not demanding loan waiver but better prices for their farm produce.
Addressing various bankers of the state here, Chouhan claimed that a measure like loan waiver favoured none, including public, farmers and banks.
Asking banks to supporting measures to double farming income, the Chief Minister asked banks to extend maximum finances to farmers, while cautioning them against delaying payments to farmers. He also asked them to stop delaying tactics in approving finance under self-employment schemes.
Chouhan’s statement comes despite the state witnessing large scale farmer protests in June. Things took an ugly turn when five farmers had died in police firing in Mandsaur on June 7 and the state plunged into widespread violence in subsequent days.
As the protest subsided, the Madhya Pradesh government clarified that it planned no loan waiver for farmers and the state saw a spate of farmer suicides.
Over two dozen farmers committed suicide, with Chouhan’s home town Sehore alone accounted for a dozen such incidents.
During the winter session of state assembly, following a question by Congress MLA Ramniwas Rawat, the government revealed that from mid-November 2016 to Feb 2017, 287 farmers had committed suicide in the state.
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