Shimla: With many farmers across regions suffering yearly crop losses, particularly in fruit crops like apple, due to frequent hailstorms, a delegation led by horticulture minister Narinder Bragta and MPs met union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar and demanded that hail storms be declared a natural calamity.
Accompanied by the horticulture minister from Jammu & Kashmir Shyam Lal Sharma, MPs Anurag Thakur, Virender Kashyap and Vimla Kashyap the delegation apprised the union minister about the problems faced by hill farmers.
Bragta said that in last three years, farmers in the state had suffered a loss of about Rs 900 crore on account of hail storms.
He said that although central government had identified hail-storm as one of the natural calamities under the water and climate related disaster but has not treated it as a as natural calamity for determining the loss of crop so that the farmers could be duly compensated.
Mr Bragta is trying to dose of the fire which he lighted, with elections nearing and a dwindling public support he seems to be trying to appease the disgruntled electorate by way of false announcements and promises running into 9digits at a time when the Govt is finding it tough to vend off salaries to its staffers, the roads to Mr Bragtas constituency are in a dilapidated condition ; it was a wasted tenure for the electorate……a photograph with the agriculture mninister alongwith the madame taussad’s Look alike BJP’s poster boy wont solve the problem….electorate can’t be fooled any more !!!