The Congress in Madhya Pradesh will launch its Assembly election campaign on Tuesday. Congress sources said that on Tuesday party president Rahul Gandhi would address a public meeting in Mandsaur to pay tribute to five farmers killed in police firing last year. Around 200,000 farmers are likely to attend the meeting. They said farm issues would set the agenda for the assembly election, and that the Congress was keen to get a head start on the farm front.
Madhya Pradesh goes to polls along with two other Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh in November, 2018.
“This would be a reminder to the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh of how it killed innocent farmers on June 6 last year. We expect around 2 lakh farmers to attend the meeting,” Jitu Patwari, the acting president of Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee, told Mint on the phone. He said the Congress president would also present his vision for ‘prosperous farming’ at the meeting. “Though the context will be Madhya Pradesh elections and farmers’ plight in Madhya Pradesh, Rahul would propose a national idea of ‘fixed minimum income per acre’ for farmers. This fixed minimum income can be provided either by the market or by the government.
This idea can be implemented by launching it initially across all 350 revenue divisions in the country. The government should prepare division-level plans for agriculture based on the climate conditions and crop patterns in a particular division. This can later be replicated at the tehsil level. The Congress party is confident that this idea, if implemented well, would solve 90 per cent of the problems confronting the farmers,” Patwari said. He added that the Congress, if elected to power in Madhya Pradesh, would implement this plan in the state.