Ruling Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab today described the Congress party's claim of "waiving debt" after coming to power as "another fraud with farmers of the state."
"The recent ploy of Congress to allure the farmers with their loan waiver scheme will be another fraud by the party with the innocent farmers of the state," SAD Secretary and Spokesman Daljit Singh Cheema said.
PPCC Chief Amarinder Singh had promised to waive farm debt if Congress comes to power in the state.
Cheema said instead of "misleading" farmers for a new loan waiver scheme during his 'Kisan Yatra', Amarinder must go barefooted to the farmers of the state to apologise for "denial of benefit" of the much proclaimed Rs 70,000 crore loan waiver scheme announced by the Congress-led UPA government in 2008, just before the Parliament elections of 2009.
"Not even one per cent of the Punjab farmers benefitted from the scheme," he claimed.
Cheema asked the state Congress Chief that he "owes an explanation" to the farmers of the state that being the highest contributor to the national food pool, why were the Punjab farmers treated so "mercilessly" by his government at the Centre.
He said the scheme which was announced to be 70, 000 crore worth of value actually "came down to Rs 52,000 crore".
Cheema claimed the CAG report has "rapped the Congress government in its report in which 22 per cent of the total cases were found to be having irregularities which comes one out of every 5 cases".
He said that CAG has examined 90,776 cases which is less than 1 per cent of the total cases and has found that 13 percent eligible farmers were left out of the scheme whereas crores of rupees were doled out to "ineligible ones".
The SAD spokesperson said this shows the "corrupt practices" which took place in the implementation of the scheme.
He said the same Congress party which "betrayed and Looted" the farmers in 2008 has again started alluring the farmers with a new scheme and even collecting forms from the farmers through their "paid" workers only to commit "another fraud" with them.
Lashing out at Amarinder, Cheema said, "The person who could not tolerate the free power facility to more than 14 lakh tubewells of the farmers by the SAD-BJP combine government and withdrew it as soon as he came to power putting a burden of Rs 30 thousand crore on poor farmers of the state is now trying to "befool" the same community with another lollipop".
He claimed the SAD-BJP government has released more than 1,50,000 new connections for the farmers.
The number of tubewells of farmers getting free power has risen to 15,50,000, he added.
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content
