Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Friday said that the Center would not have withdrawn the controversial agriculture laws if there was no farmers’ agitation ahead of elections in many states. Addressing the party’s virtual rally for Uttar Pradesh, the Congress general secretary attacked the BJP as well as the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party for playing politics of caste and communalism instead of development issues.
He said that farmers are facing many issues like high electricity bills, shortage of fertilizers, inadequate price of crops or stray animals destroying the fields, but the BJP-led government failed to address them. He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had recently claimed that thousands of people had become “lakhpatis” in Uttar Pradesh, but when he traveled to villages and districts he found that more people were pushed into poverty. “BJP’s politics is only for their big corporate friends. Their policies, politics and media are all working for their friends.”
“You must have seen how they tried to bring those agricultural laws. If the farmers had not protested for a year and elections were not scheduled at the end of that protest, I can say with certainty that there would have been no change. He said, ‘Modi ji does not come in front of you. Everyone drank fake tea and apologized for the laws which were not there for elections,” he alleged.
He said that the farmers of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana etc. protested for more than a year, but no one listened to them, while the farmers kept saying that the law was not in their favour. “But the BJP government said the law was pro-farmer. In fact, this law was a conspiracy to hand over the benefits of farmers’ hard work to the corporate. You all protested and hence the conspiracy stopped.”
Farmers protested from November 2020 to December 2021, demanding withdrawal of three controversial agricultural laws and legal guarantee of Minimum Support Price (MSP) of crops. In November, Modi had announced the withdrawal of three agriculture laws. Meanwhile, Vadra also criticized the BJP-led Center for selling off PSUs, which he said are the biggest creators of jobs in the country and more than the jobs generated by some corporates.
During the virtual rally, attended by Congress workers from across the state, Vadra attacked the BJP-led Uttar Pradesh government over the issues of women’s safety and unemployment in the state. He said, ‘Be it BJP, SP or BSP, everyone is playing the same game. When they come for your vote, they talk on communal and religious issues. They do not talk about creating employment opportunities, women’s security, women’s empowerment, protection of Dalits or checking inflation.
Voting is being held in seven phases this time for 403 seats in the Vidhan Sabha. The first two phases of polling were held on February 10 and 14. The results will be declared on March 7.
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