By IANS
Nagpur : Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Rajnath Singh will Thursday lead the party’s “kisan yatra” (farmers’ march) in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region, where scores of farmers have been driven to suicide over the last few years, mostly on account of their inability to pay their creditors.
The two-day march, beginning from Sewagram in Wardha district, has been publicised as an agitation to press for the farmers’ long pending demands of loan waiver and remunerative price for agricultural produce.
The procession, which will also be joined by BJP vice president Gopinath Munde, is a part of the party’s concerted preparation in Maharashtra for the forthcoming general elections after its recent victories in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.
The procession, which will be flagged off from Sewagram’s Bapu Kuti, will culminate at Yavatmal, the epicentre of the region’s agrarian crisis, BJP state unit leader Nitin Gadkari told IANS.
“The party is targeting the participation of at least one million farmers in the Yavatmal rally for which the workers have started all-out preparations,” Gadkari said.
Free and adequate power supply to farms, time bound completion of the region’s pending irrigation projects and lowering of the farm loan interest rate from 13.5 percent to four percent are among the other major demands of the party aimed at easing the agrarian crisis, he added.
In a positive gesture towards the distressed farmers, the party will adopt 500 widows of the farmers who have committed suicide in the past two years, said Gadkari.
The BJP’s bid to galvanise the party machinery and show its strength is coming a month after its alliance partner Shiv Sena took out a loan waiver procession in the region during the winter session of the state legislature.