MANDSAUR/NEW DELHI: At a massive rally of farmers from MP and Rajasthan held to pay tributes to farmers killed in last year’s Mandsaur firing, Congress national president Rahul Gandhi lambasted the Modi government and made a series of promises for powering his party back to power in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh, on Wednesday. Rahul promised that all loans of farmers would be waived off within 10 days of his party assuming power in Madhya Pradesh. Taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not announcing farm loan waiver, Rahul said, “I met PM Modi at his office only once and that too for demanding loan waiver for crores of farmers.
I asked him that if he could waive off loans worth `2.5 lakh crore of top 15 industrialists, why can’t he waive off loans of crores of farmers, which will cost much lesser. But the PM maintained studied silence instead of replying to my demand.” Accusing the Modi government of backtracking from promise of 2 crore jobs to youths, Rahul said the PM doesn’t want to give you jobs, but only aspires that you leave your homes in search of jobs in cities and towns and sleep on roads.
All shops in the country now are invaded by Made in China products. Our PM enjoys rides on swings with the Chinese President in Gujarat and also carries Made in China cellphone in his pocket, but remains silent on the movement of Chinese troops into Doklam.” The ruling BJP was quick to react to Rahul’s speech. While BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya mocked at Rahul’s speech saying “Rahul’s arrival in MP, will ease BJP’s path to victory,” it was Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley who launched the most blistering attack on Rahul. Jaitley accused him of being “a little too liberal with facts”. He asserted that defaulting industrialists had secured loans in times of the UPA government at the Centre.
“Every time I listen to the view of Rahul Gandhi, both inside and outside Parliament, I ask myself the same question – How much does he know? When will he know? Listening to his speech delivered in Madhya Pradesh today reaffirms my curiosity about the answer,” Jaitley stated in a social media post. The Finance Minister termed ‘totally false’ Rahul’s accusation that Modi waived of loans of `2.5 lakh crore of the 15 top industrialists in the country. “Those who owed money to the banks and other creditors have been declared insolvent.
They have been removed from their companies by IBC (Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code) enacted by Prime Minister Modi’s government. These loans were given largely during the UPA government,” Jaitley stated. To another accusation that the bank loans are not available to farmers but to industrialists only, Jailtley, who’s recuperating after kidney transplant, claimed that such a scenario existed in times of the UPA government.
“From 2014, we have been systematically taking one step after the other to recover these monies back,” he claimed. Jaitley also responded to Rahul’s accusation that the Modi government gave away `3,500 crore to two diamond merchants, while stating that the “banking fraud started in the year 2011 when the UPA-II was in power”. Jaitley also asserted that India continues to be the fastest growing economy in response to Gandhi’s claims that jobs are not being created.
