The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Madhya Pradesh, formed after toppling Kamal Nath’s Congress government, has urged all farmers to file a case against the former Chief Minister and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over the promise of a loan waiver .
Kamal Nath, the former CM of the state, announced a farm loan-waiver scheme immediately after assuming office, which would likely be scrapped by the BJP government, reported NDTV. In light of this, the present government has urged all the farmers, who received loan waiver certificates but did not benefit from it, to file cases against the previous government, ex-CM, and Rahul Gandhi (then Congress president).
The scheme that went by the name ‘Jai Kisaan Fasal Rin Maafi Yojna’ was a much-hyped welfare announcement by Kamal Nath’s government. In fact, this was one of the poll planks in the run-up to the elections, when Rahul vowed to waive off farm loans of 20 lakh farmers within 10 days if they won.
Madhya Pradesh Agriculture Minister Kamal Patel says there is still ambiguity over whether the outstanding loans were cleared by the previous government.
He said: “Within two hours of being sworn in as the chief minister, Kamal Nath had signed the file to waive off farm loans worth Rs 54,000 crore of 48 lakh farmers in line with the poll promise made by Rahul Gandhi. But only loan waiver certificates have been distributed to the eligible farmers. It is still not clear whether the outstanding loans have been waived off or not.”
In view of this, Patel asked the farmers who received the certificates to lodge fraud cases and cases of criminal conspiracy against the concerned Congress leaders. He also promised to act on such cases immediately.
Responding to this development, senior Congress leader Jitu Patwari dared the BJP government to scrap the farm loan waiver scheme and claimed that 80 percent loans had been waived. The rest got stuck because BJP had toppled their government, he added. Instead, he asked the present government “to waive off the loans of the remaining 20 per cent farmers” and warned him of farmer agitation if they do otherwise.
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