BJP reneged on promise to MSP for farmers: Digvijaya Singh

Hyderabad: Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh here on Thursday alleged that BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have gone back on their promise to provide Minimum Support Price (MSP) for farmers.

He said that while campaigning during the run-up to the 2014 general elections as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Modi had himself promised to provide the MSP based on the recommendations of late M.S. Swaminathan, whom the BJP government very recently awarded with Bharat Ratna.

“According to these recommendations, the MSP should be based on the total input costs plus 50 per cent. But sadly, Modi and the BJP in their characteristic way of reneging on their promises filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court, saying providing MSP based on actual input cost plus 50 per cent extra was not possible,” Singh said.

Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) members said BJP should have implemented Swaminathan’s recommendations as that would be an equally great tribute to him.

When the country’s farmers staged a protest for about one year in the outskirts of Delhi two years ago, the Prime Minister promised to consider legal guarantee for the MSP.

“Two years have passed but nothing has happened. The same farmers, in order to remind Modi of his promise, decided to march towards the national capital. But they are being prevented and barred from moving towards the national capital.”

He said: “The entire country has seen the horrible visuals as how the BJP-ruled Haryana Police has been resorting to brutal and inhuman ways of preventing farmers’ march. Teargas shells are being lobbed using drones.”

“It is something akin to what Israel has been doing in Gaza. Are we living in a war zone and conflict zone or are we trying to create one? This is apart from the nails inserted on roads, huge boulders, ditches and other hurdles created on the national highway between Delhi and Punjab to prevent the farmers’ movement as if the Annadata are enemies of the country,” the Congress leader added.

He alleged that the BJP governments have gone for “reverse blockade”.

“This is unprecedented. Petrol pumps in Punjab and Haryana have dried down. Either their supply has been stopped or they have been threatened not to provide petrol and diesel to farmers for their tractors and other vehicles. Besides, this illegal and unlawful blockade has caused harassment to the general public with an obvious motive to create negative and hostile public opinion against the farmers.”

Digvijaya Singh claimed that the Congress made a historical announcement on Tuesday at Ambikapur in Chhattisgarh promising to provide legal guarantee for MSP for various crops.

This has been the long pending demand of the farmers from across the country, he said.

The Congress in its Raipur session had also promised in its resolution on agriculture that it will provide a legal guarantee for MSP.

The Congress assures the farming community that it will be the first and foremost agenda of the INDIA bloc alliance if it assumes charge after 2024 general elections, Singh added.

Calling Modi’s 10-year rule as ‘Anyakaal’, the Congress leader said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi made lot of promises to the countrymen ahead of the 2014 general elections.

Modi said he will bring back entire black money stashed in foreign banks for which he blamed Congress and deposit Rs 15 lakh each in every Indian’s bank account.

He added: “Modi promised two crore jobs every year. From that count, twenty crore jobs should have been created and provided to the youth of the country. But nothing of that sort has happened. Rather, the rate of unemployment in the country is the highest in the last 45 years.”

There are 30 lakh vacancies in various Central government departments, corporations/PSUs alone, which the Modi government is not filling, he said.

“PM Modi promised to double the farmers’ income by year 2022. Ten years have passed, and farmers’ income has dwindled after taking into account various factors like inflation and other input costs. More farmers have been committing suicide during the Modi government than in the past.”