Gujarat Congress slams Modi for Global Agriculture Summit

Leader of Opposition in the Gujarat Assembly, Shankarsinh Vaghela, today slammed Chief Minister Narendra Modi saying he was wasting taxpayers' money to fulfil his prime ministerial ambitions by organising the Global Agriculture Summit.
"The Chief Minister is wasting taxpayers' money to fulfil his Prime Ministerial dreams and using it as a stepping stone to Delhi," Congress leader Vaghela told reporters here today.
"He invited people from outside and awarded them thousands of rupees, though he has not offered any relief to farmers in Gujarat," he said.
On the inaugural day of the two-day 'Vibrant Gujarat Global Agriculture Summit, 2013' yesterday, Modi handed out awards to farmers from various states carrying a cash prize of Rs 51,000 each for exemplary work in agriculture and allied sectors.

Ridiculing Modi's claims that Gujarat had achieved a 10 per cent growth rate in the agricultural sector, Vaghela said, "During the past five years, this rate never reached beyond 6 per cent and Gujarat is nowhere in the list of top five states in the country".
At the inauguration yesterday, Modi had attacked the central government on the issue of farmers' suicides and blamed it for not facilitating easy bank credit for the agricultural sector.
"Because of cumbersome banking processes and the burden of debt, around 2,70,000 farmers have committed suicide in the past 20 years," Modi had said.
Criticising Modi for these comments, Vaghela said, "During the last 12 years, more then 7,000 farmers committed suicide, but the Gujarat government has not offered any relief to those families. Nobody from the government has even bothered to pay a visit to those families on humanitarian grounds.