Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday cornered the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over their election promises to give ₹15 lakh, 2 crore jobs and loan waivers for farmers. He said that Congress party had come up with a “practical” minimum income guarantee scheme – Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY) to support the poorest in the country.
Gandhi was addressing a rally along with party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in Uttar Pradesh’s Fatehpur Sikri where state president Raj Babbar is contesting election.
“PM Modi came to power making false promises. He has destroyed the farmers of this country. I will not say we will deposit ₹15 lakh in everyone’s bank account. I will give you a practical number. We will deposit ₹72,000 in the bank accounts of the poor people,” Gandhi said.
He said that the benefit of the NYAY scheme will be seen most by the people of Uttar Pradesh. He said the party will bring a special budget for farmers and work on setting up food processing units.
“Just like there used to be two budgets earlier, we will bring one national budget and one budget for farmers. They will know what the government is doing that year for farmers including minimum support price, loan waivers at the beginning of the year. We have started working for farmers in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. We want a food processing unit to be set up in every district so that farmers can get fair prices, employment right next to their farms,” he said.
Fatehpur Sikri along with seven other Lok Sabha constituencies in Uttar Pradesh goes to poll in the second phase of polling on Thursday. UP goes to poll in seven phases. Of the 80 constituencies, eight went to poll in the first phase on 11 April.
Cornering the BJP over their expenditure on advertisements, Vadra said that the “truth is drowned” by such campaigns. She said that the government must talk about what they have done for the youth, farmers, women security instead of talking about Pakistan.
“If you look at the amount of advertising the current government does, you would think that a lot of work has happened. But the truth is something else. For the last two months, my travel across Uttar Pradesh, I have seen the truth on the faces of unemployed youth, farmers who do not get fair prices. This is the reality of our country,” she said.
“It seems that the government has faith neither in democracy, its institutions nor the people......had they been real nationalists they would have tread the path of truth,” Vadra said.
PTI contributed to the story.
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