By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 10 Feb: Congress General Secretary Randeep Surjewala, who was in Uttarakhand today, issued a statement asserting that time had come for the people to throw out the BJP government in Uttarakhand. Surjewala claimed that BJP was highly arrogant and creating problems after problem for the farmers who were forced to launch the longest ever agitation against the anti-farmer policies of the BJP Government.
Surjewala also claimed that the poor workers and farmers would never forgive the BJP Government, which he claimed was conspiring to sell the country and had placed Uttarakhand’s agriculture in the hands of a handful of capitalists. He claimed that the Modi-Dhami governments were also responsible for the martyrdom of 700 farmers and also for ruthlessly running over of farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri by the country’s Minister of State for Home Affairs.
Surjewala claimed that the poor workers and the farmers who toiled so hard in their routine life to produce food for the country would never forget and forgive the BJP Government. It had been six years since Narendra Modi had promised the farmers of the country in his rally in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, on 28 February, 2016, that his government would double their income by 2022. Now it was 2022 already but the income of the farmers had not doubled. On the other hand, their sufferings and pain had definitely increased a hundred times.
Six years later, the Modi government released the NSSO report in September 2021, stating that the average income of farmers has been reduced to Rs 27 per day and the average debt had gone up to Rs 74,000 per farmer, Surjewala further claimed in his statement.
He added that the DNA of the Modi government and BJP was anti-farmer and anti-worker. He said that as soon as the Modi government came to power in May 2014, it brought three ordinances one after the other to grab the land of the farmers. The Modi Government also stopped the bonus of Rs 150 given by the state governments on wheat and paddy. He sought to remind that the Modi Government submitted before the Supreme Court through an affidavit that, if MSP was given at cost plus 50 percent, then the market would be ruined. It brought the scheme of crop insurance with the sole objective of ensuring profits for the private insurance companies. It also raised tax on agriculture inputs thus raising the cost of cultivation substantially.
The Congress leader alleged that Modi Government was paying Rs 6000 per annum to the farmers but was taking back from them much more money by raising the cost of cultivation and through taxes. The prices of fertilisers were also increased intentionally. The price of a 50 kg bag of DAP was increased overnight from Rs 1200 to Rs 1900. After all-out protest, the BJP withdrew the increased price, but DAP fertiliser was not to be found and farmers were forced to buy it at Rs 2200 per bag in the black market.
The BJP government stole 5 kg of fertiliser from a 50 kg bag of urea fertilizer. The cost of a 50 kg bag of potash has been increased from Rs 450 to Rs 825 in the year 2014. The cost of a 50 kg bag of super phosphate had also increased from Rs 260 in 2014 to Rs 340.
He claimed that during the tenure of the Modi government, between 2014 and 2020, 78,303 farmers or farm workers were forced to commit suicide. He said that a resounding defeat of the BJP in Uttarakhand would show the mirror to the party. The defeat of the BJP would be victory of the farmers.
