Karnal, April 19
With over 2,000 acres of standing wheat crop blazed to ashes in the state during the past few days, farmers who have lost their crop are down in the dumps. Reports of fire incidents continued to pour in from various parts of the state yesterday too.
The state government is yet to take a decision on compensating the loss. In most cases, it has been determined that the cause of the fires has primarily been loose electricity wires passing over fields.
The former Member of the Lok Sabha and a leading farmer of Karnal, Mr Mahinder Singh Lathar, talking to The Tribune said: “The state government should come forward and take adequate steps for the implementation of crop insurance scheme so that the farmers can be compensated for the loss to their crop without any extra burden on the state exchequer”.
Mr Pritam Singh, a farmer of Dadupur village (Karnal) who lost his entire crop in the fire, had recently married his daughter, raising a loan from a arhtiya hoping that he would repay it after the harvest. Instead, his standing loan will now increase with the addition of interest. “It will be very difficult for me to repay the loan even in the years to come because I’ll be requiring additional loan to sow the new crop”, he said.
