Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Sunday extended his party’s support to the farmers who have set on march to Delhi seeking fulfillment of the promises Modi government made to them when they withdrew their year long protest outside the Delhi borders.
He congratulated the Punjab farmers for launching the stir for the fulfillment of their demands.
Addressing an impressive workers convention organized by the Punjab Congress, Kharge pointed out, Modi had promised so many things to the farmers including guarantee on Minimum Support Price. “What happened to those promises?” he asked.
The Congress president accused Prime Minister Modi of calling farmers names and describing them as terrorists and ‘andolan jeevies’ in a most derogatory manner.
Congratulating the people of Punjab, he said, the state was unique as it was only here that both the Jawans and Kisans are found. He said, in some places there are kisans but no jawans and in some places there are jawans but no kisans. But, he remarked, it is only in Punjab we find both Jawans and Kisans thus a great and unique instance of former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s slogan, “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan”.
But, Kharge regretted, Modi had tried to damage and destroy the both institutions of farming as well as the defence services. He said, while Modi first brought three black laws, then he introduced the Agnipath scheme in the defence services.
Substantiating his charge that Modi was anti-farmer, Kharge disclosed that Rs one lakh crores allocated for the agriculture sector had lapsed as the Modi government did not spend it on agriculture.
He disclosed that Rs 40,000 crores was pocketed by the private insurance companies under the ‘Fasal Beema Yojana’. Besides, for the first time in independent India’s history, farmers were paying tax of Rs 25,000 per hectare.
Similarly, Kharge added, the Modi government was not filling about 30 lakh vacancies in various government departments and public sector undertakings. He alleged that Modi does not want the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and the Backward Classes to get 50 percent jobs. He said, Modi wants the poor to remain poor. He said, the big and huge industries set up under the Public Sector by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru were being handed over to one single friend of the Prime Minister.
Responding to Modi’s question as to what Congress did, Kharge said, “we built dams, brought white and green revolution and set up institutions like the Punjab Agriculture University”. He challenged the BJP and Modi to name a single such thing they had done for the country.
Taking a jibe at the Prime Minister, he remarked, sometimes Modi flags off a single train twice, first from South and second time from the north.
