Kolkata, August 27: At a time when the country is staring at the prospect of a shortfall in agricultural production, a research farm in West Bengal was damaged and the output of an experiment to increase productivity destroyed because of Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s rally.
The Adoptive Research Farm at Islampur in North Dinajpur district is lying waste since Sonia held an election rally here on April 27, destroying products of a painstaking research and rendering the farm useless.
An alarmed development officer of the farm, Suvendu Mandal, sent letters to the principal agricultural officer of North Dinajpur and the district administration, informing them of the disaster. But it was too late.
” We have several plots, with very low boundary walls, where we grow crops by new methods to experiment with different cropping techniques that can be adopted by farmers in the state. The work at the research farm has totally stopped because of the damage,” Mandal said in the letter.
He is yet to receive a response.
Mandal said the farm was doing experiments to grow hybrid maize on about three acres.
Some sophisticated equipment to measure temperature and rainfall accurately were also damaged by either the rally organisers or the crowd.
On April 24, some local Congress leaders, accompanied by policemen, started measuring the land to build a podium for Sonia’s rally three days later.
The officials at the agricultural department at Islampur objected to it, but they were shown a letter issued by the district administration granting permission to hold the rally on the farm land.
Later, tractors began ploughing the land under the supervision of the Special Protection Group that provides security to the Congress president, destroying the crop into which years of research had been put in.
” On the day of the rally, about one lakh people descended on the farm land and were there for over six hours. The whole area was dug up to create barriers and the crowd left a huge amount of litter, rendering the farm unusable,” said a senior official of the agricultural department.
” Later, we came to know that our principal agriculture officer had also given the permission to hold the rally on the farm land,” he alleged.
The principal agriculture officer of the district, Balaichand Chakraborty, denied that and said he was on leave when the rally was held.
” It is true that a large portion of the land was damaged because of the rally. But I did not give any permission. The district magistrate had given the required permission. I have received the report on the damages from the development officer of the Adoptive Research Farm,” Chakraborty said.
When contacted, district magistrate Ramanuj Chakraborty dismissed the matter as a minor issue. ” It is a minor issue. I am not aware that the research land was damaged because of the election meeting.”
—Agencies