BATHINDA: Having protested outside the residence of Punjab finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal at Badal village for 15 days to demand fair compensation to farmers whose cotton crop was damaged by a pink bollworm infestation, farm organisation BKU (Ekta Ugrahan) vacaed the spot on Tuesday and announced to resume the agitation outside Bathinda district administrative complex (DAC) on October 25 for an indefinite period.
The farm outfit asked its activists to come prepared at Bathinda on October 25 for a sustained fight.
The farm union has been demanding Rs 60,000 per acre as compensation. It started the protest on October 5.
The state government had called the union for talks on October 13, but talks failed as the government offered to give only Rs 12,000 per acre as compensation as per state government policy.
BKU (Ekta Ugrahan) state secretary Shingara Singh Mann said the state government was claiming to be a sympathiser of farmers, but was no less than the BJP’s central government when it came to dealing with farmers.
“We have calculated the costs which farmers have put in for cotton. The government is not ready to provide fair compensation, even though it agrees with the costs of farmers,” he said.
Cotton had been sown on 3.03 lakh hectares in Punjab this sesaon. Half of this are falls in Bathinda and Mansa district, where the pink bollworm infestation has been reported widely. “We have also asked government to investigate into quality of seeds and pesticides as these are suspected to be spurious,” he said.
