BATHINDA: Having protested outside the Mansa deputy commissioner’s office complex for three weeks to demand complete farm debt waiver and compensation for suicide-hit farm families, farmer organisation Punjab Kisan Union on Tuesday started collecting data of suicide-hit farm families who have not got any compensation from the state government, so that they could submit the details to the district administration.Earlier, the farmer organisation provided details of farmers whose debt had not been waived, to district administration on Monday. Activists of the organisation are on protest since January 22.The state government provides compensation of Rs 3 lakh to suicide-hit farm families, after verifying the suicide was committed due to debt. District-level committees headed by deputy commissioners check claims made by families and send these to the state-level committee for sanction. As per three universities of Punjab, 16,600 farmers and farm labourers ended their lives between 2000 and 2015, with a majority of them taking the step due to debt.Punjab Kisan Union president Ruldu Singh Mansa said “hundreds of families had not got any compensation as the authorities rejected their claims on one pretext or the other”. “The families fail to get justice even after losing their breadwinners. We will collect details of these families and hand these over to the district administration. We will follow up the cases, so that authorities cannot reject these claims on flimsy grounds,” he said.He added that many farmers had not got any benefit from the state government’s debt waiver scheme. “We want complete waiver, as was promised by the Congress before elections to the state assembly in 2017,” he said.SAD spokesperson Daljit Singh Cheema said the Congress government has failed to provide compensation to suicide-hit families and its debt-waiver scheme had proved to be a failure as farm suicides were unabated, and more than 900 farmers and farm labourers committed suicide in less than two years of Congress’s rule in Punjab.Mansa deputy commissioner Apneet Riyat said the district-level committee took up the claims every month in a meeting. “At times, cases get stuck due to technical reasons,” she said.

Stay updated with all the Amritsar Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.