Maintaining a stoic silence for months after their worst ever defeat in the Assembly poll, Congress finally came out to attack the Modi government at the Centre on completion of three years at the helm and also the Yogi government in UP for their ‘anti-farmer’ policy.
The party claimed that the BJP government was the worst as far as farmers’ welfare was concerned and the number of suicides by farmers in the country spiked during its tenure.
It also termed the announcement of farm loan waiver in UP as an eyewash and demanded a White Paper on it. The party claimed that they no government order on loan waiver could be found in any website of the state government and hence it was merely an ‘myth’.
Terming that the two-month old Yogi government as a ‘chetawani sarkar’ ( warning government) for handing out around 600 warnings without doing any work, senior Congress leader and AICC communication wing chief Randeep Singh Surjewala and state Congress president Raj Babbar alleged that the BJP government failed in harnessing crime.
Addressing media persons in lucknow on Saturday, Surjewala alleged that 35 farmers committed suicide on a daily across the country basis taking the toll to 12602 in 2015, but in 2016 it rose further crossing the 14000 mark.
“This NDA government at the Centre has been a curse for the farmers in the country as a result problems of agriculture sector has manifold,” he alleged.
Surhewala alleged that the NDA regime waived off loans worth over Rs 1.54 lakh crores to industrialists friends but were not giving any respite to farmers who have been demanding loan waivers. “The Modi government is betraying farmers in the name of relief and loan waiver. The same is being done by the Yogi government in UP,” he said.
“The state government claimed to have waived Rs 30,000 crore of crop loans outstanding on March 31 last year. It deliberately did not tell the loan amount repaid by farmers between March 31,2015 and March 31 this year,” he said.
“The truth is that crop loan is given twice a year — for Rabi and Kharif. Farmers repay loan for every crop before being eligible to take new loan for the next season. The government must come out with a white paper telling the truth,” the Congress leader said.
Surjewala charged the Yogi government for making changes in the Governor’s address to suit its end. He further said that the through the ‘Pradhanmantri Fasal Bima Yojgna’ only insurance companies would earn huge profit. Citing example, he said that during 2016 Kharif season, the government paid a premium of Rs 17184.79 crores while compensation paid by companies were just Rs 6808.48 crores which put the profit at Rs 10,376.31 crores.
When the leader’s attention was drawn to the foreign visit by Karti P. Chidambaram at a time when the Enforcement Directorate has lodged an FIR against him for money laundering, Surjewala instead of giving a pertinent answer chose to ask,”Who allowed him to leave the country IJ”