'Potato dumping incident father-son conspiracy to defame govt'

Targeting Samajwadi Party patron Mulayam Singh Yadav and chief Akhilesh Yadav, a senior UP minister claimed today the "father-son" only paid lip service to farmers during their rule but were now trying to malign the Yogi Adityanath government by dumping potatoes.
He also said that a panel formed by the UP government on the problems being faced by the state's potato farmers will submit its report on January 22.
"The father-son duo, claiming to be 'Dharti Putra' (son of the soil) and messiah of farmers, is forgetting that they were in power for 15 long years in the state and paid a lip service to farmers," UP Agriculture Minister Surya Pratap Shahi said.

He alleged that the SP leaders were now working against the Adityanath government.
"Farmers don't come in the dark to throw potatoes in front of CM's residence. They will protest in broad daylight as they are not thieves who come out at night," he said.
Taking a jibe at the Samajwadi Party over the potato throwing incident in the state capital, he said, "Keeping in view the problems of potato farmers, the chief minister has constituted a committee under his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya and forest minister Dara Singh Chauhan. I am also a member of the committee."

The report of this committee will be submitted on January 22 to the chief minister, he said.

Potato farmers faced problems during the terms of earlier governments too and now the purchase rate of potato is fixed, he said, adding, "When the rate of potato was Rs 250-300 per quintal, we fixed the rate at Rs 467 per quintal."
Two people, including a Samajwadi Party worker, were arrested last Saturday for allegedly hurling potatoes near the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly.
On tweets of former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav slamming the BJP government on the farmers' issue, Shahi said, "Akhilesh is victim of unemployment these days and he can only tweet, but his tweets have no facts. Samajwadi Party didn't work for farmers but the BJP is doing the job."

PM Modi is working hard to double the income of the farmers by 2022 and farmers' loans were waived and under various projects crores of rupees are being made available for seed and agriculture machine purchase, Shahi said.
"Because of the hard work done by the BJP, other parties are getting depressed," he said.