Thaindian News

Nagpur, Nov 29 (IANS) Thousands of Maharashtra’s farm widows have demanded that they should be invited to the four-day lavish wedding ceremonies of Nikhil Gadkari, son of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari, starting here from Wednesday.

In an open letter to the BJP leader, the Vidarbha Farm Widows’ Association (VFWA) congratulated him for the proposed mega-wedding in which over 200,000 invitees are expected from all over India and abroad.

“Among the prominent invitees are Congress president Sonia Gandhi, herself a widow, and her orphaned son, Rahul, who are likely to attend the wedding,” said VFWA president Bebitai Bais.

Top BJP leaders remained unavailable for their comments despite several attempts by IANS.

Bais urged that since more than 200,000 invitees, including top politicians, businessmen, Bollywood personalities and party activists were scheduled to attend the wedding, another 10,000 farm widows would not make much of a difference to what is being touted as the “biggest, most lavish” wedding.

Nikhil, a businessman, is getting married to Rutuja Pathak, a Sanskrit student pursuing MA, and the nuptials are slated for Dec 2 at the Rajwada Palace here.

All major hotels, lodges, halls, grounds, schools, colleges and other venues, besides, private aircraft and luxury cars, have been booked for the wedding and for the accommodation of the thousands of people who have started arriving from all over the country.

Debt and crop loss have been driving farmers to suicide in six cotton-growing districts - Yavatmal, Wardha, Buldhana, Washim, Akola and Amravati - in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha. Of them, Yavatmal is the worst affected district.

In 2006, Maharashtra with 4,453 farmers’ suicides accounted for over a quarter of the all-India total of 17,060, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).