Modi slams Centre's notification on cotton export

Cotton growers has been befooled by UPA government

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has described as “cheating” the Centre's latest notification on cotton export announced on Monday and said lakhs of cotton growers in the State and elsewhere in the country had been befooled by the Congress-led UPA government.

Reacting sharply, Mr. Modi said it made it clear that the Centre had never allowed exports of cotton and it would also investigate the export of the commodity earlier, incorporating a clause that registration allowed earlier have to be reinvestigated with no time frame.

Lies exposed

The notification, he said, had also “exposed the lies” of the senior Congress leader from the State, Ahmed Patel, the political advisor to the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, and other Congress leaders that the so-called ban on export was lifted by Union Commerce Minister Anand Sharma at their behest. “The tall claim has burst like a balloon,” he said.

Recalling his earlier letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh alleging “centre – textile millers' nexus” in imposing the ban on export of cotton, Mr. Modi said the latest notification had only proved that his suspicion that the move was intended to help “certain vested groups” was correct.

Mr. Modi said it was only after the entire cotton supply chain of Gujarat, starting from farmers and market yards to ginners' association collectively going on an indefinite strike, that the centre allowed the “lie to circulate” to give an impression that the ban had been lifted. “It was a lie to mislead the farmers and common man,” he alleged. He cautioned that the cotton-growers in Gujarat would not take such cheating lying down.