Bhopal: Senior Congress leaders on Tuesday dumped loads of documents at former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's residence as a 'proof' that their party has waived loans of 21 lakh farmers after coming to power in the state in December last year.
Chief Minister Kamal Nath also later joined in calling Chouhan’s claims as blatant lies and shared the details of loan waiver with the media.
The Congress move is being seen as a counter to the BJP’s release of the ‘Aarop Patra’ (document of allegations) on Saturday in which the saffron party had claimed the farm loan waiver was a complete failure as not a single farmer had been relieved yet.
Angry over Chouhan’s repeated attack on the Congress’ farm loan waiver and calling it a fraud in election rallies, party leaders, led by ex-Union minister Suresh Panchauri, brought cartons of documents in two vehicles near Chouhan's residence in Bhopal.
They then put the cartons on their heads and walked to the former chief minister's official residence where they dumped the documents.
Chouhan, who was aware of the Congress move, soon came up with recorded videos of Congress president Rahul Gandhi wherein he is promising to waive loans within 10 days of his party coming to power. He rejected the documentary evidence and termed it as a "bundle of lies".
The former chief minister, who talked to reporters after the Congress leaders left, said, “Kamal Nath has sent me a list from the agriculture department, but we need the list of bank that would ultimately do the needful. Simply by vitiating the atmosphere and confusing farmers won’t fetch them anything. The state government made a provision of Rs 1,300 crore while promising to waive loans worth Rs 48,000 crore.”
Later, Congress’ Bhopal candidate Digvijaya Singh said the list sent to Chouhan’s residence had names of beneficiaries from even the latter’s native village.
Meanwhile, Nath called a press meet, which he said was not a political one and he owed no answer to Chouhan’s accusations. Furnishing documentary evidence, Nath said, “Shivrajji don’t teach me the budget. I have seen many more budgets than you.”
The chief minister also claimed to have made a detailed plan for the waiver as farm loans could not be written off with a magic wand. He said nationalised banks have agreed to a one-time settlement plan wherein they would waive 50% amount as they do for corporate sectors.
“For loans of co-operative banks, we have asked them to use their share capital and promised them to recapitalise them later,” he added.
“We promised loan waiver and we fulfilled it in two hours after our government came to power,” Nath said, while adding that implementation of any scheme needed time.
“I guess Shivrajji doesn’t know how to open the portal (of the agriculture department), so I have offered him names of beneficiaries in a printed form,” he said.
“In limited time, we got 47 lakh farmers apply for the waiver, of whom 21 lakh have got the money in their accounts ahead of the imposition of the Model Code of Conduct. The Election Commission has now allowed us to transfer money to accounts of farmers in areas where the polling is over.”
While offering mobile phone numbers of beneficiaries if anyone wanted to further cross-check the claims, Nath said, “Every single sentence uttered by Shivraj is a lie.”
It is widely perceived by political observers that the Congress' pre-poll promise of farm loan waiver helped it to come to power in the state after a gap of 15 years.
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