Mandsaur firing: Situation under control, CM announces Rs 1 cr for families of deceased

 The deceased farmers have been identified as Prem Singh, Kanhaiya Lal Patidar, Bunty Patidar, Chainaram Patidar and Abhishek Patidar.Internet and mobile phone services were suspended in several districts such as Indore, Ujjain, Ratlam, Dewas and Mandsaur to discourage the farmers, who have been protesting from June 1, from gathering in large numbers. Mandsaur police superintendent O.P. Tripathi said curfew had been imposed in the city. For the past two days, BJP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had been claiming that farmers had called off their agitation. Chouhan had held two rounds of discussions with the pro-BJP Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS) on Sunday and Monday. However, it seems the BKS has little or no influence on the agitating farmers. The Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangh, an umbrella organisation of protesting farmers in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, has called a strike in Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday. The outburst of rural discontent has cast a cloud on the claim by Chouhan, the five-time winner of the Krishi Karman Award conferred by the Centre for maximum foodgrain production in the country. Witnesses said 2,000 farmers protesting on the Neemach-Mandsaur highway torched over a dozen trucks and several motorbikes. On Monday, chief minister Chouhan had suggested the government would purchase onions from the farmers at Rs 8 per kilo. He had also announced the setting up of a price stabilisation fund of Rs 1,000 crore to buy farm produce at the minimum support price. Farmers in several states, such as Maharashtra, where a farmer committed suicide on Tuesday, Haryana, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, have been seeking loan waivers after the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh wrote off dues. Many farmers in Madhya Pradesh want Chouhan to write off outstanding loans, pointing to unseasonal rainfall and drought in the past three years. In March, SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya had cautioned that "credit discipline breaks when you waive off farm loans. Money will come in today because government will pay but when we will give loan in future, farmers will wait for next elections".