Amid a Congress walkout and Left protest seeking farm loan waiver in drought-affected states, the government on Friday told the Lok Sabha that the Centre had provided ₹3,000 crore to Tamil Nadu through the State Disaster Relief Fund for five years. .Farmers from Tamil Nadu are sitting on dharna in the capital, seeking loan waiver and drought relief.

‘Funds hiked’

“Before 2014, the total amount for State Disaster Funds stood at just ₹24,000 crore for five years. We have raised this to ₹ 47,000 crore,” Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said in reply to Congress member Jyotiraditya Scindia, who drew the House’s attention to distressed farmers in the country, during Zero Hour.

Scindia said the BJP had promised to waive farm loans in Uttar Pradesh before the Assembly polls but was yet to make any announcement. “You had talked about ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’, but farmers in Tamil Nadu are on the verge of committing suicide, as there has been 62 per cent less rainfall in the state,” Scindia said.

On Uttar Pradesh, Singh said: “If the state government waives farm loans from its own exchequer, we will be happy and welcome it.”

Allotment to TN

On Tamil Nadu, the minister said he and other ministers had met the farmers’ delegation, adding that in 2012-13, the state had sought ₹19,000 crore, and was given ₹600 crore. “This time, we have given the state ₹1,700 crore, which is the highest till now,” he said.

On suicides by farmers, Singh said that as per the National Crime Records Bureau, among all suicides in the country, 15 per cent were agriculture-related, which had come down to 9.4 per cent in 2015.

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