FARMERS SUICIDE AND CONGRESS GOVT

FARMERS COMMITING SUICIDE EVERY DAY AND CONGRESS GOVT WAIVING OFF 2 CRORE FOR MEIRA KUMAR

FARMERS SUICIDE ACROSS INDIA

There are reports ( SOURCE: NDTV) that five farmers including one woman farmer have committed suicide in the Vidarbha region of the state in the last 24 hours. Three farmers were from Yavatmal, one each from Washim and Amravati districts. According to statistics released by a Farmer advocacy group Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) the five farmers - like thousands of other farmers - were waiting for relief aid declared in December 2011 by Maharashtra chief minister but hadn't received anything till date. Ramdas Dhale of Chincholi village in Yavatmal district who killed himself, the VJAS says, was a debt trapped farmer who owned over Rs. 3 lakhs taken as a bank loan and from a money lender. Last week, in Yavatmal district, another farmer killed himself by drinking pesticide. In his alleged suicide note, he asked co-farmers not to vote for the Congress and the NCP accusing them of failing to bring relief to distressed farmers.

WAIVING 2 CRORES FOR MEIRA KUMAR

The government has waived almost Rs. 2 crore(SOURCE: NDTV), allegedly owed by Speaker Meira Kumar for use of her father Jagjivan's Ram residence in Delhi. An RTI query has revealed that Meira Kumar, on getting the bill, said she had vacated the house number 6 at Krishna Menon Marg in November 2002 and so the government decided to withdraw the recovery notice.

The bungalow was allotted to her when she was appointed a Union Minister in 2004. But when she became the Speaker in 2009, Ms Kumar was given a bungalow on Akbar Road. RTI activist Subhash Agarwal had alleged that the Speaker continue to use the bungalow even after she was allotted one on Akbar Road.

The Speaker's office had earlier said her family does not hold the plot anymore; it has been turned into a memorial for Babu Jagjivan Ram. The government had, in 2000, decided not to allow for any bungalows to be turned into memorials in the New Delhi zone. Babu Jagvian Ram had earlier stayed on in the bungalow till his death in 1986