Mumbai, Oct 28 (IANS) The Shiv Sena (UBT) on Tuesday accused BJP and its central leadership of doing election politics and acquiring land for party offices and inaugurate them, alleging that they have no time to provide much-needed financial aid to rain and flood-hit farmers from various parts of Maharashtra.

The Thackeray camp on Tuesday targeted the BJP over the ground breaking of a multi-storey office of its Maharashtra unit in south Mumbai that was done by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday.

“Is the government, which is putting all its efforts into increasing the party’s assets, aware of the crisis faced by the farmers due to the rains that still continue in the state, further causing damage to the crops and increasing financial distress of the farmers?” asked the Thackeray camp in the Saamana editorial.

“The terrible heavy rains in the past four months have already destroyed the entire Kharif crops on 70 lakh acres and now the rains that still continue have also ruined crops on a few more lakh hectares.

“From Konkan to Marathwada and from western and northern Maharashtra to Vidarbha, the farmers of Maharashtra want to say ‘goodbye’ to the rains but it seems they will continue and completely destroy crops. When farmers are struggling to cope up with the situation, the BJP-led government is busy expanding the party’s assets,” the Thackeray camp stated in the editorial.

“The rulers of Delhi are busy with election politics. They have time to quickly acquire land for party offices and inaugurate them. However, they do not have time to pay attention to the farmers’ concerns and provide them with immediate assistance.

“This is probably the first time that there has been six consecutive months of rainfall from May to October. Due to the low pressure area formed in the Bay of Bengal and the cyclone that has formed, the state has been experiencing unseasonal rainfall till October 30. The Meteorological Department has announced that there will be more rain. Therefore, farmers will have to watch their crops destroyed in despair for another three-four days,” said the editorial.

The Thackeray camp slammed the state government for its argument that the term “wet drought” does not exist in the rule books and so it cannot consider more aid to farmers hit by the natural disaster.

“However, the government should keep aside “wet drought” and immediately provide assistance to the farmers when Maharashtra has seen such monstrous rain this year,” it said.

Stepping up the attack against the state government citing apathy towards farmers, the editorial said the government has neither declared a “wet drought” nor has a central team been sent to inspect the damage to crops in Maharashtra. The meagre assistance that the Maharashtra government announced did not reach the farmers before Diwali, it pointed out.

According to the editorial, the continuous rains have completely destroyed crops on lakhs of acres across the state and after these devastating rains that lasted till September, there was some relief. The harvesting of the few crops that had survived the heavy rains was in full swing when the rains came again.

In some places the paddy crop was about to be harvested, but the return of the rains ruined all the hard work of the farmers in Gadchiroli and surrounding areas of Vidarbha and the entire paddy fields in Konkan.

In Marathwada, too, the soybean crop that was stored was soaked due to the return of the rains. Maize and cotton crops were also badly hit. In Nashik district too, the return of the rains caused great damage to the onions, summer onion seedlings, vegetables and vineyards that were about to be harvested. Due to the continuous rains and cloudy weather, the expenditure of grape growers on spraying has doubled this year, it concluded.

–IANS

sj/rad