ED gets remand of educationist

and crop loss due to unseasonal rains, Pawar said.

They have to throw away their produce sometimes because of low prices, he said.

Pawar also alleged that electricity connections to agricultural pumps are being disconnected for non-payment of bills.

E arlier this week, Leader of Opposition Ajit Pawar had raised the issue of damaged crops due to excessive rainfall in the House. He demanded that the government spell out how it plans to mitigate the hardships of farmers who lost their standing crops due to unseasonal rains, thunderstorms, hailstorms and lightning.

Electricity bills of farmers should be waived as they are fac-

The economy of Maharashtra as well as the country can not grow if farmers are in distress, the NCP leader said.

Farmers in the state were also having trouble getting crop loans, and as nationalized banks do not entertain them they have to go to money lenders, he said. If they can not repay the loan they have to take the extreme step of ending life, he added.

Insurance companies do not pay out crop insurance if farmers face losses due to heavy or unseasonal rains, Pawar claimed.

Production costs have increased due to rising prices of fertilizer, he said, adding that unless fertilizer prices are brought under control, farmers will not get any profit.

First India Bureau Mumbai: A petition has been filed in the Bombay High Court challenging the state government notification on establishment of Family Coordination Committee to monitor inter-faith and intercaste marriages in Maharashtra.

Expressing dissent over the move, the plea states, “That the assumption that adult women who choose and consent to marry someone from another faith need to be ‘saved’ is misplaced and goes against the spirit of the Constitution.”

As per the petition by Samajwadi Party MLA Rais Shaikh, the resolution is discriminatory against a particular religion and is thus violative of Articles 14 (right to equality), Article 15 (forbidding discrimination), 21 (right to life which includes the right to privacy), and 25 (right to freedom of religion) of the Constitution of India amongst other Articles.

It further alleged that the GR is government’s attempt “to discourage and/or forbid interfaith marriages and is essentially a pre-cursor to laws related to purported Love Jihad marriages which has been stayed in numerous states of India.”

The Maharashtra government issued the GR on December 13, 2022, following the gruesome murder of Shraddha Walkar in Delhi allegedly by her interfaith live-in partner and the committee is alleg-