Holding the erstwhile Congress-led UPA government responsible for the woes of farmers in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday claimed that while packages declared in the name of farmers used to be siphoned off
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Addressing a massive rally at Yavatmal in the Vidarbha region, Mr. Modi took thinly-veiled jibes former Union Agriculture Minister and NCP leader Sharad Pawar.
“When parties in today’s INDIA alliance had a government at the Centre, the Union Agricultural Minister at that time was from Maharashtra [alluding to Mr. Pawar]. Then, packages in the name of Vidarbha farmers used to be declared in Delhi, but they were looted before the money ever got to the farmers. Poor, farmers and the Adivasis did not get anything. Today, I pressed one button, and Rs. 21,000 crores of PM Kisan Samman Nidhi reached the accounts of crores of farmers. This is Modi’s guarantee,” said the PM, who inaugurated a slew of irrigation projects and other development works aimed at farmer households in the arid Vidarbha and Marathwada regions.
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The PM was addressing around one lakh members of women’s self-help groups (SHGs) during the rally held in Yavatmal’s Bhari village. Significantly, Mr. Modi had visited Yavatmal just before the start of the 2014 Lok Sabha election as well.
Mr. Modi alleged that the Congress governments in the past had, for decades, kept 100 major irrigation projects hanging fire of which the majority were in Maharashtra, particularly in Vidarbha.
“Of these 100, more than 60 have been already been completed by the BJP and BJP-allied governments in States. 26 among these projects were pending in Maharashtra of which 12 have been completed while others are proceeding expeditiously…Every farmer household in Vidarbha has a right to know whose sins your families have had to endure for all these years,” the PM said, remarking that “Modi’s guarantee means that that guarantee will be kept.”
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He claimed that before 2014, Before 2014, there was chaos in India’s rural hinterland, and that the parties that made up the opposition INDIA alliance today, were completely apathetic to the plight of farmers in the country.
“When there was the Congress government at the Centre, if one rupee was released from Delhi, then a mere 15 paise reached the final beneficiary. So, had the Congress been in power right now, then of the Rs. 21,000 crores which you [farmers] have received today, Rs. 18,000 crore would have been looted by middlemen,” claimed Mr. Modi.
Expressing confidence that the BJP-led NDA would exceed 400 seats in the upcoming Lok Sabha election, Mr. Modi said that the large numbers of “mothers and sisters” in the crowd proved that the entire Vidarbha region had decided that the NDA would achieve a thumping victory in the Lok Sabha election.
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Alleging that it was the Congress that had kept adivasis backward and did nothing for farmers, the PM credited his party with the completion of several pending water projects in Maharashtra, stating that the Nilwande project was completed by the BJP after 50 years, as was the Tembhu lift irrigation project.
Before his address, the PM, flanked by CM Eknath Shinde and Deputy CMs Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar, unveiled a 41-foot statue of Jana Sangh ideologue Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya. He also inaugurated the Wardha-Kalamb broad gauge line (part of Wardha-Yavatmal-Nanded new broad gauge line project) and the New Ashti - Amalner broad gauge line (part of Ahmednagar-Beed-Parli new broad gauge line project).
The projects are aimed at enhancing connectivity in the Vidarbha and Marathwada regions and boosting socio-economic development.