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Minimum income guarantee scheme to benefit 20 mn in Maharashtra: Congress
- Scheme would be implemented in letter and spirit if the Congress was voted to power in 2019: Ashok Chavan
- Around 20 million people living below the poverty line set to be the direct beneficiaries of the scheme
Mumbai: Hailing Congress President Rahul Gandhi's announcement of a "minimum income guarantee for every poor person in the country" as "historic" and a "first-of-its-kind scheme in the world", the Maharashtra Congress on Tuesday said the scheme, if implemented, would provide direct benefit to 20 million people in Maharashtra who are below the poverty line.
Maharashtra Congress chief and former chief minister Ashok Chavan said the scheme would be implemented in letter and spirit if the Congress was voted to power in 2019. "There is a fundamental difference between what the BJP promises and what we promise. The BJP goes back on its promise calling it jumla, but we implement what we say," Chavan said.
He stated that the scheme would prove to be as historic as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the Right to Information Act, and the Food Security Act that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had brought.
Addressing a farmers rally in Chhattisgarh on Monday, Rahul Gandhi said if voted to power in the 2019 elections, the Congress party would provide a guaranteed minimum income for every poor person to make sure nobody stayed hungry. The ' rally was organised by the Congress to express gratitude to farmers for helping the Congress register a landslide win in the recent Chhattisgarh assembly elections. The Congress party had promised farm loan waiver and other farmer-friendly sops in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, too, where it unseated the BJP in the recent elections.
To a question, Ashok Chavan denied that the promise had anything to do with the forthcoming elections. Asked where would the financial resources for such a scheme come from, Chavan acknowledged that proper financial planning would have to be made, adding, the UPA government had successfully implemented the NREGS and Food Security Act.
"The schemes for the poor that the UPA announced were properly legislated and provided for," Chavan said. The former chief minister claimed that the UPA in its 10-year rule had lifted 20.7 million people out of poverty, but the Global Hunger Index had put India on par with Nigeria during the Narendra Modi regime.
Mumbai Congress president Sanjay Nirupam said similar questions were raised by the BJP and economic experts over the MNREGS, but all such apprehensions were proved to be "unfounded" later. Nirupam added that the minimum income scheme would address both the rural and urban poor.
Chavan said Maharashtra's economic survey for 2017-18 projected that 20 million people were living below the poverty line. "These people would be the direct beneficiaries of the scheme," he added.
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First Published:29 Jan 2019, 03:18 PM IST
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