Belagavi: The winter session of State Legislature began on Tuesday, Dec 9th, at the Suvarna Soudha in Belagavi. At commencement, members paid a one minute silent tribute to the departed souls in the State.

The session began on a stormy note. Opposition party BJP protested against the state government for failing to ensure that sugar factories pay `2,500 per tonne  as minimum support price for cane supplied by growers. Most of the sugar factories have paid just `1,700 or `1,800 per tonne as minimum support price for cane which is very less and leading farmers into loss, so Govt should take immediate action on those factories and fix good supporting price to cane, they said.

“Nearly 60 factories have failed to pay 1837 crore to the farmers in the year 2013-2014 and farmers of onion and maize are also in trouble  due to excessively abundant supply of production”, claimed Jagadhish Shettar.

“Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had promised in the last session that farmers will be getting Rs 2650 per tonne but the farmers are not getting that price in the state”, said K S Eswarappa.

In answer to these allegations made by the BJP, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that BJP is misleading the farmers and it was the BJP Govt which assaulted the farmers in their period in Haveri and now BJP is politicizing the issue and acting innocent just to gather the sympathy of farmers.

Since the session is taking place in Belgavi in North Karnataka, the MLAs of that region attending the session have decided to raise the issues related to north part of Karnataka.

The BJP dissatisfied with the answers by the Govt staged a dharna and walked out of the house.