Farmers' suicides: Centre to unveil plan in a fortnight

Bangalore, Apr 17 (UNI) The Centre will unveil a comprehensive plan of action in the next two weeks to resolve the crisis following farmers' suicide in over 30 districts in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram disclosed today.

Talking to newspersons after inaugurating a Biocon facility here, he said Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar had evolved a plan to come to the rescue of the farming community in distress and his Ministry had approved it.

''The proposed plan will be unveiled within two weeks in the presence of the Chief Ministers concerned, Mr Pawar and myself,'' the Minister said.

Opining that non-availability of sufficient credit was the main reason for the farmers taking the extreme step, Mr Chidambaram said the Centre had come forward to solve the problem of flow of credit to farmers. However, the rest of the causes had to be tackled by the State Governments concerned.

Refusing to comment on the poll promises of the DMK, including providing television sets to the poor, the Congress leader said it was an election promise made by a party fighting State elections.

''It will be an issue of an elected State Government, whether the resources of the State Government would justify such promises or not. The Centre cannot comment on it.'' The Congress was part of the Democratic Progressive Alliance, led by the DMK in Tamil Nadu.

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