Patna: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday said his party would waive farm loans if voted to power in the Lok Sabha polls. The announcement comes a couple of days after the NDA government announced a subsidy for small and marginal farmers, and his own promise to provide minimum guaranteed income.
Speaking at a Jan Akansha rally in Gandhi Maidan in the Bihar capital — a first for the party in three decades — Mr Gandhi promised that the Congress would initiate a number of steps to deal with farmers’ distress and unemployment.
He said his party’s governments in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh had waived farm loans within a few days of coming to power. He said he had told the CMs of the three states that they should take the lead in ushering in the second Green Revolution. “We will do what is needed for providing relief to farmers and jobs to youths. We will waive their debts,” he said.
“We fulfilled our promises in the three states within weeks of coming to power. We will do so across the country once elected at the Centre,” the Congress president said.
RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav shared the stage with the Congres president and backed Mr Gandhi for the Prime Minister’s post. He urged secular parties to form an alliance to stop the BJP from coming to power in the 2019 general elections.
“You have all the qualifications to be the next Prime Minister of the country. All secular parties must come together on one platform to stop the NDA from coming to power in 2019”, Mr Yadav told Mr Gandhi.
Mr Gandhi alleged that the Centre’s crop insurance scheme was “aimed at taking away the hard-earned money of farmers to fill up the pockets of big businessmen”. He repeated his slogan ‘chowkidaar hi chor hai’ (the watchman is the thief) in an allusion to PM Narendra Modi. He said the Congress would also ensure a minimum income for every poor person unlike the “false promise” of '15 lakh to all made by Mr Modi ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls that was never fulfilled.
