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Bhubaneswar: Senior BJD legislator and state president of the ruling party’s women’s wing, Pramila Mallick, invited the Opposition parties’ ire Sunday for making a statement that apparently belittles the serious issue of farmers committing suicide.
Attacking the Opposition Congress and BJP for their shrill censure of the state government for the rising number of farmers’ suicides, she asked the two parties to serve “amar laddu” (immortality sweets) to farmers in the state so that they would not die henceforth.
“Whenever someone dies, they call it a farmer’s suicide. Will no one die in the state? Why does not the Opposition distribute ‘amar laddu’ so that no one dies?” said the Biju Mahila Janata Dal president while speaking to journalists.
The Binjharpur MLA also dared the Opposition parties and the media by inviting both to visit her constituency and prove that farmers had committed suicide due to crop loss. “Let the Opposition prove any farmer’s suicide case in my area if they have the guts,” she said.
The former minister also rubbished news items on a farmer’s suicide published in three leading vernacular dailies, saying the newspapers reported the suicide of a farmer in her constituency even though there has been none. “I asked theose reporters to visit the ground with me. When we visited the crop fields of the deceased farmer, we saw there was knee-deep water in his fields. Now, tell me, were his paddy crops affected by drought?” she asked.
The Opposition parties flayed Mallick for her statements. BJP national secretary Suresh Pujari said, “If the farmers had not committed suicide due to crop loss, why is it that they are killing themselves during October and November and not before that?”.
Terming Mallick’s statement as “unfortunate,” Congress spokesperson Sulochana Das said it indicates the ruling BJD leaders’ “extremely low levels of thinking”. The ruling politicians should not mock farmers this way, said Das.
BJD spokesperson Shashi Bhusan Behera, when reached, declined to comment on Mallick’s statement.”The state government is careful about the problems faced by the farmers and taking all necessary steps to stand up to the challenges,” he said.
