Rattled by Rahul Gandhi’s repeated onslaught on the controversial land acquisition bill, the BJP on Tuesday fielded senior cabinet ministers M. Venkaiah Naidu, Nitin Gadkari and Ch Birender Singh to counter the Congress allegations.
Taking a dig at Rahul”s comments that land was akin to a ”mother” for farmers, Naidu sarcastically remarked that the Congress scion was shedding crocodile tears after snatching away the mothers of lakhs of kisans. Making a parody of a popular Hindi proverb, Naidu said ”after gobbling lakhs of acres of land Rahul Gandhi had embarked on a yatra to Ramleela Maidan”.
The minister was referr-ing to Sunday”s public meeting in Delhi”s Ramleela grounds where Rahul had blamed the Modi govt of trying to snatch farmers” land and hand it over to a handful of industrialists and corporates. Naidu charged the Congress of acquiring 80 thousand acres of land in Haryana and more than one lakh seven thousand acres in undivided Andhra Pradesh during 2004-2014. It may be noted that both the states were ruled by the Congress then. All this land was acquired without any consent of the farmers, without a social impact assessment being conducted and much below the declared rate of compensation, Naidu alleged.
Rural Development Minister Ch. Birender Singh said the Harynana govt had embarked on a land grabbing spree and allotted 37 SEZs in and around Delhi but only 7 of them were functional. A scare had been created among farmers that they would lose their land under the new legislation thus compelling the farmers to sell their lands at throwaway prices to private players.
Meanwhile, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari questioned the Congress” sympathy for farmers by underlining the poor condition of farmers in Congress-ruled states. ”Farmers’ suicides started under the Congress regime due to their wrong economic policies and lack of vision. While BJP chief ministers earned kudos for double digit agriculture growth, the Congress states have shown a minus rate in the agriculture sector, he claimed. ”Where was Sonia Gandhi when Congress regimes in Haryana and Andhra Pradesh were giving away fertile farm lands to industrialists and builder mafia? The Congress leadership can mislead its party workers by pretending to be the messiah of the poor today but not the countrymen”, Gadkari fumed.
