New Delhi: With Rahul Gandhi back from his two-month sabbatical, the Congress launched a full-fledged attack on the BJP government at a big rally of farmers in Delhi on Sunday, bringing out its heavy artillery against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s proposed land reforms.
Portraying Modi as an anti-poor, Rahul said the Prime Minister was repaying the loans he had taken from corporates during Lok Sabha elections by snatching land from farmers.
“Modi wants to give your land to industrialist friends from which he has taken loans for his huge campaign. In Gujarat Model, Modi showed us that he can snatch land from farmers very easily,” Rahul said at Kisan rally in Ramlila Maidan in Delhi.
About 80,000 people attended, in a show of strength by the opposition party, which is attempting a political resurrection after humiliating defeats in last year’s national elections and multiple state polls thereafter.
Enumerating the various measures taken by the UPA, Rahul said: “When UPA was in power, it helped farmers in every possible way. UPA introduced schemes to save debt-ridden farmers. We increased the MSP of wheat from Rs 540 to Rs 1400. The UPA government waived Rs 70,000 crore of loans taken by farmers.”
Questioning the BJP government on taking the Ordinance route on land acquisition, Rahul asked, “We fought for your rights. It took us 2 years to make this Land Bill of 2013, the BJP supported and applauded the Bill then. Then what changed? Instead of passing it through Parliament, why did BJP bring in an Ordinance?”
Criticising Modi for attacking the opposition in Canada, “Modi went to foreign countries; he said he is wiping the garbage of 50 years. I felt very bad over it. The words Modi spoke does not do justice to the post of PM or Modi himself,” Rahul added.
He also took a dig at Modi’s ‘Make in India’ campaign. “Make in India is Modiji’s dream that will not work. They will take away your land and you will have no other employment.”
“I tell you how Modi ji won the election. He took loans of thousands of crores from big industrialists from which his marketing was done. How will he pay back that loan now? He will do it by giving your land to those top industrialists. He wants to weaken the farmers, then snatch their land and give it to his industrialist friends,” he added.
Both Sonia and Rahul Gandhi accused PM Modi of “abandoning” farmers.
“The Modi government is anti-poor, anti-farmer. We will now fight and not let those forces win which want to destroy us. We might not be in govt but there will be no setback in our efforts for you,” Congress President Sonia Gandhi said.
“I want to tell Modi, enough is enough. The country’s farmers and workers have seen through his empty promises,” she added.
Parliament’s Budget Session – the first part of which Gandhi controversially skipped – reconvenes on Monday. The Congress, which has a majority in the Rajya Sabha or Upper House and had blocked the land bill last month, and is set to do the same when it is introduced again.
Some time before the Congress rally began, Modi addressed a workshop of his party’s MPs, projecting his government as pro-poor and pro-farmers and lashing out at his critics for their “congenital habit” of running down the BJP.
After the Congress rally, BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad took a dig at Rahul Gandhi, saying, “Did the Congress introspect at all? And even if they did, they couldn’t come up with a new speech? I think Congress has made up its mind to lose with a worse margin the next time.”