All India Kisan Congress (AIKC) chairman Sukhpal Singh Khaira on Wednesday lambasted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for not having a concrete agricultural policy and said that the Congress has accepted five guarantees for farmers outlined by the AIKC for the party’s manifesto for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Addressing a press conference after a meeting with the Congress leadership in Delhi on Wednesday, Khaira said that the party’s five guarantees for farmers will include the implementation of the Swaminathan Commission recommendations and minimum support price (MSP) for crops.
The Congress Working Committee (CWC), which met on Tuesday, has authorised party chief Mallikarjun Kharge to give the poll manifesto its final shape with party leaders familiar with the matter saying that it would be released soon.
Khaira alleged that MSP for crops was one of the promises made by the BJP but it was not fulfilled and said that if the INDIA alliance is voted to power, a commission will be formed to analyse farm loans and ways will be found to write them off, especially for the small and marginal farmers.
He said, “Sixteen lakh crores of debt of big corporations were written off by the public exchequer of the country, but 17 lakh crores of debt of the small farmers were not. Hence, this debt of 17 lakh crores, which is still pending, will be written off by the INDIA alliance if we win in the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections.”
He alleged that the Prime Minister Bima Yojana has been misused on a large scale, especially in Gujarat, and said that the scheme will be brought again by the INDIA alliance with strict conditions, so that crop losses caused by calamity, floods, or droughts can be addressed by it.
He also criticised the import policy of the NDA government and said that the INDIA alliance will formulate a fresh import export policy for agriculture and will give prominence to research, as done by the Congress in the 1960s.
Singh also lamented that the BJP did not exempt insecticides, pesticides, or seeds from the ambit of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and promised to waive off GST on farming inputs.
There was no immediate reaction from the BJP to Singh’s charges.
The Congress Working Commitee on Tuesday gave unanimous approval to a set of 25 guarantees, with five promises each to the young, women, farmers, labourers and marginalised, to form the core of its manifesto. In the CWC meeting on Tuesday, Congress president Kharge said that the country “wants change” and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s guarantees will meet the same fate as the (BJP’s) India shining campaign of 2004”.
