Spokesperson: Shri Deependra Singh Hooda: He said that today the farmers of the country are drowned in debt and under the BJP government, more than one lakh farmers of the country have committed suicide from 2014 to 2022. This figure is published by the Center for Financial Accountability (CFA).

When the Congress Party was in power, farmers’ loans worth Rs. 72,000 crores were waived off, but the BJP government did not spend the agriculture budget of Rs. 1 lakh crore and surrendered it. Couldn’t this amount have prevented so many farmers from sacrificing their lives?

In the last 10 years, there was no loan waiver for farmers, but corporate loans worth Rs. 14.5 lakh crores of big industrial houses were waived off. The agriculture related budget of the country is continuously declining. In the country’s agriculture budget, it was 4.4 percent in 2020-21, 3.5 percent in 2021-22, 3.1 percent in 2022-23 and last year it was 2.5 percent i.e. it is declining every year.

With this amount, farmers could be given minimum support price on many crops. But the anti-farmer BJP government could not even think of doing this. - Tuesday, January 16, 2024.