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
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.
