The Congress on Saturday asked the BJP government to rush to the aid of farmers in Sirsa, Fatehabad and other parts of the district where desi cotton has been damaged due to severe heat waves prevailing in the State.

“Quick assessment should be made of the losses incurred by them and they should be expeditiously and adequately compensated,” Kiran Choudhry, Leader of Haryana Congress Legislature Party said.

“The farmers have suffered the maximum under the insensitive BJP Government in Haryana. Last year, they lost their crops to untimely rains and hailstorms, suffered the pangs of second consecutive drought extending right into the winter, had whitefly attack ruin their crops, and now, the complete wipe-out of their recently sown cotton crop,” she said in a statement here.

Ms Choudhry demanded that the BJP Government should stop beating drums and reach out to the harassed farmers with help, both in cash and kind, to enable them to sow alternative crops and make good their losses.

“First it was whitefly and now it is the severe heat wave that has ruined them,” she said.

“Added responsibility rests at the doors of the government since the farmers had sown desi cotton on the advice of the Agriculture Department and Sirsa-based Central Institute of Cotton Research (CICR),” she added.

Source - http://www.thehindu.com