The BJP on Monday aggressively attacked the Congress party, accusing it of “duping” farmers in States that it ruled by reneging on the poll promises of a farm loan waiver.
Addressing a presser on the issue at the BJP’s New Delhi headquarters, Union Minister for Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar said the Congress had gone back on its promised waiver of all farm debt in the five States of Karnataka, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.
Sharing details, Mr. Javadekar said that the Congress had promised a waiver of ₹45,000 crore of farmers loan in Karnataka but had not paid even ₹75 crore. He added that farmers were in deep distress and have been served notices by banks where they have outstanding loans. “The forms they have been asked to fill out are several pages long and have conditions that would leave out most farmers from the purview of the waiver,” he said.
In Punjab, against the total farmers loan of ₹90,000 crore, the State’s Congress government has not allocated even ₹30 crore in the State budget, he said. “Now nationalised banks that had given farm loans have been told that the waiver would not apply to them, but only to cooperative banks,” he added.
“The Congress is anti-farmers. It has duped farmers in the name of waiving their loans,” he said.
The BJP has shied away from farm loan waivers as a policy but, Mr. Javadekar said, “wherever BJP government had done waivers, like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, it had been implemented properly, and reached beneficiaries.”
He refused to give a categorical answer to a question on whether or not the BJP as a party was in favour of loan waivers. Instead, he said that agricultural distress was a complicated issue and getting farmers remunerative prices was important.