Hoshangabad: The influential BJP leaders of the state are involved in usury and other illegal businesses. They give loans to farmers in distress at high rates of interest and when they are unable to repay the loans, they start terrorising them and ultimately grab their land. A similar incident was reported from Budhni, the assembly constituency of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, where the influential BJP leader forcibly took possession of the farmer’s land and he committed suicide.
This was claimed by senior Congress leader Suresh Pachauri after returning from a visit to Gwadia village of the Budhni tehsil near here. Shatrughan Meena, a farmer of the village had committed suicide a couple of days back.
Pachauri met the family members of the deceased. He said that the BJP Mandal general secretary Arjun Malaviya had duped the farmer and had fraudulently got the farmer’s land registered in his name. He demanded that a case should be registered against Malaviya. On this occasion, Raghuveer Patel, Gaurishankar Meena, Chandrapal Patel, Mahesh Rajput, Sonu Rajpur, Tariq Patel, Amritlal Yadav, Mandangopal Dube and Sushil Khatri were present.
There are also allegations that Malaviya had forcibly occupied the land of a tribal farmer Kaluram. Malaviya had got the ownership of 9 acres of land of Kaluram transferred in the name of another tribal Aapan Singh. The latter is from a BPL family and could not have purchased the piece of land worth Rs 72 lakh.
Pachauri also met the family members of Babulal Verma, a farmer of Randhal village, who had ended his life by setting himself ablaze. His family members told Pachauri that Babulal had run up a huge debt and finding it impossible to repay it had ended his life. Other farmers who met Pachauri told him about the problems they are facing in selling their produce at procurement centres. He was told that in many cases, farmers were handed over notices seeking recovery of loans they had never taken. Pachauri heard them out patiently and assured that all the Congress was with them. He said that if the government does not do justice with the farmers, the Congress will knock at the doors of the courts.
BJP people’s reps are power-drink
Pachauri said that the power-drunk people’s representatives of the BJP had hearts of stone. It was surprising, he said, that none of them had cared to visit the families of the farmers who have committed suicide and they have no sympathy for the farmers.
