Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal announces compensation for farmers

NEW DELHI: Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said the government will pay `20,000 per acre for every farmer in rural Delhi whose crop has been damaged in the recent hailstorm, a compensation package he said was the “country’s highest”. “It (the compensation) was necessary to send a message across the country,” Kejriwal said at a public ground in Mundka, along Haryana border.

The “message” sought to be given out through the high compensation, which he said would come up to `50 000 per hectare, was that Delhi government was exceptional. “Farmers of Punjab, UP, Maharashtra etc should ask their own state governments to give better compensation,” he said. Widening the ambit of farmer-centric announcements, he said subsidies on seeds and fertilisers, cheaper power connections for farming, tubewells, among other things were also on the government’s radar.