Congress seeks special flood package for Haryana from Centre

At a briefing, Hooda said the compensation announced by the BJP government is woefully inadequate against the damage caused in the state. “The compensation was only a drop in the ocean and the farmers should get ₹50,000 to ₹60,000 per acre.

Former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Tuesday said that the Central government should announce a special package for the losses caused by floods in Haryana.

Hooda said announcing only ₹7,000- ₹15,000 compensation per acre is akin to making a mockery of farmers as standing crops of the farmers have been destroyed.

At a briefing, Hooda said the compensation announced by the BJP government is woefully inadequate against the damage caused in the state. “The compensation was only a drop in the ocean and the farmers should get ₹50,000 to ₹60,000 per acre.

Hooda said announcing only ₹7,000- ₹15,000 compensation per acre is akin to making a mockery of farmers as standing crops of the farmers have been destroyed. “They have suffered a loss of about ₹1 lakh per acre. There is no hope of the coming crop either, which means farmers have suffered a loss of two full seasons. Despite this, the government is announcing compensation of less than the cost of fertilisers. Farmers should get at least ₹50-60,000 per acre compensation,” he demanded.

He said 14 lakh acres of crops of farmers have been completely destroyed due to floods. “Thousands of houses have developed cracks. Shops, buildings and other establishments have been damaged. People have suffered a huge financial loss. To compensate for all this, proper compensation is required, for which the central government should announce a special relief package for Haryana,” he said.

The Congress leader said he himself has visited the flood-affected areas, and the situation in half of Haryana is bad. “Despite this, it is unfortunate that the state government has not declared Haryana a flood-affected state. The state government should have declared it flood-affected and demanded a package from the Centre, because 5,200 villages of the state are affected by the flood,” he said.

Hooda said the government should immediately get special girdawari done, and provide financial help to the farmers. “The government registers cases of stubble burning on the basis of satellite images, but when it comes to floods, diseases and other disasters, the farmers are left at the mercy of a web portal. BJP has made the portal a means to escape from its responsibility and delay compensation,” the former CM said.