Cong demands national farm loan waiver, measures to double farm income in Budget

"BJP government is constantly changing goalposts. Sometimes it talks of 2022, sometimes 2024. Since the BJP has not fulfilled any promises in the last five years, the entire machinery including Prime Minister Modi is trying to mislead people through propaganda", said senior Congress leader and former Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan.

He was addressing a 'special press conference', at AICC headquarters, announced by the Congress to highlight the state of economy and unemployment issues, days before the budget, which will be presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Feb 1.

"The biggest promise of the BJP government was to double the farmers income by 2022. It has been four years since that announcement. With 2022 only two years away, the public wants to know the truth," Chavan said.

He also charged that the promise of doubling farmers income has also turned out to be a 'jumla' and added that "it is unlikely that farmers income will double by 2022".

"We expect the BJP government to provide relief to the farmers in the upcoming budget. Farmers are suffering, committing suicides and the Government is hiding data. We hope there are no more suicides and the farmers are compensated for loss due to natural disasters," he added.

The former Chief Minister said that in the last budget, BJP government talked about big investment in agriculture and they talked of creating 10,000 new Farmer Producers Organisation.

"How many of these have been made? nobody knows. They talked about E-NAM, announced Rs 2000 crores for EMIF, only spent Rs 10 crores", he alleged.

Chavan also charged that there were 22,000 E-NAMs proposed, only 376 have been built and that too are not being used.

"We hope that the Finance Minister will clarify about this in the budget," he said.

Referring to the government procurement system of FCI, the former Maharashtra Chief Minister said it needs a lot of improvement that it has an outstanding debt of Rs 1.75 lakh crore.

"Due to this, there are rumours of government purchase system being discontinued. The whole system is ruined, the government is trying to avoid it," he alleged.

Stating on Minimum Support Price, he said it is also a major problem for farmers.

"In the current kharif season, MSP of crops has increased by 8 per cent - 37 per cent, which is about 22.5 per cent on average. Farmers growing tur, moong, urad, soyabean, sunflower, jowar, millet, ragi have not got minimum support price," he added.

The Congress leader further said that they hope in the upcoming budget, GST rates for agriculture are reduced.

"The rate of GST on agricultural inputs and equipment should not exceed 5 per cent. GST rates should also be reduced on branded products," Chavan added.

He further stated that the UPA government always tried to ensure that the market prices do not fall below the minimum support price, 'however', "the farmers have not been getting MSP as BJP government has dropped prices drastically in the name of controlling inflation".

Image credit: UNI