Prime Minister Narendra Modi had “betrayed” farmers by not implementing the Swaminathan Commission recommendations on minimum support price (MSP) and should apologise to the country for it, the Congress said on Wednesday.
The party claimed that Mr. Modi was “opposing” what he had recommended when he was the Gujarat Chief Minister in March 2011.
“Be it the BJP’s manifesto of 2014 or the recommendation of Chief Minister Modi’s committee in 2011, the Modi government betrayed the farmers on the guarantee of giving legal MSP,” Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera alleged.
“Prime Minister Modi should apologise to the country — for speaking a lie to the farmers, for going back after filing an affidavit in the Supreme Court, for not answering the question of MSP through RTI (Right to Information), and for calling farmers terrorists and foreign agents,” Mr. Khera said.
Countering the charge that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had not implemented the ‘Swaminathan Commission’ report, Mr. Khera said that out of 201 recommendations, the UPA had implemented 175.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also spoke with a farmer injured in police action during a protest march, and accused the Modi government of having a “dictatorial attitude” towards the country’s food providers. In separate posts on social media platform X, Mr. Gandhi reiterated his party’s promise of backing MSP with a legal guarantee.
“Modi, his propaganda machinery and friendly media are the enemies of the poor and farmers. When it comes to the interests of those who built India, ‘government experts’ start worrying about the budget. But it is not about the budget, it is about the intentions. There is silence on loans and tax waivers worth lakhs of crores to industrialist friends, silence on water, forests and land being gifted to them, and silent on PSUs being sold at throwaway prices,” Mr. Gandhi said.
He added that questions were raised whenever MSP, pensions for Aginveer soldiers, or the Budget for honouring Grihalakshmis or home-makers became known.
Hitting out at the Centre over the farmers’ protests, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh asked why the government was “running away” from giving legal guarantee on MSP despite repeated promises, and claimed the farmers had “lost faith” in the Modi government.
“In 2011, Narendra Modi, as Gujarat Chief Minister and Chairman of a working group, had submitted a report to the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which said that ‘In order to protect the interest of the farmers, we must ensure through legal provisions that no transaction between farmer and trader should be done below MSP’,” Mr. Ramesh said. “But till date, there is neither legal guarantee of MSP nor is it based on the Swaminathan formula of C2+50%,” he said.
