KRRS vows to defeat BJP govt at Centre for being ‘anti-farmer’

DHARWAD: Leaders of various farmers’ associations and political parties converged at Nargund and Navalgund on Friday and paid tributes to farmers who laid their lives during the farmers’ agitation 43 years ago — on July 21, 1980.
While the martyrs are remembered with reverence once in a year as a custom, the cause for which they sacrificed their lives still remains unfulfilled.Farmers continue to reel under distress and successive governments have been only promising relief.
At the farmers’ convention organised by Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS) here, the leaders blamed the governments at the Centre and the state for their “anti-farmer policies”.
KRRS president Badagalapura Nagendra said the convention had passed 17 resolutions, including the one to oust the BJP government at the Centre.
Inaugurating the convention, former agriculture minister of Andhra Pradesh, Vadde Shobhanadheeshwar Rao, urged the Siddaramaiah government to implement the recommendations of Swaminathan Commisison.
In 1979-80, the farmers of Nargund and Navalgund taluks had launched agitation against the government forcibly collecting the betterment levy from farmers in the Malaprabha Command Area, which included Nargund and Navalgund.
Their argument was that the benefits of the Malaprabha project had not reached majority of farmers due to faulty planning and collection of levy from non-beneficiaries was unjustified. The agitation turned violent on July 21, 1980, resulting in police firing which claimed the lives of two farmers. In retaliation, the agitators killed two policemen — SI Patel and ASI Nagappa Akki.