Sunday, 30 January 2022 | PNS | Dehradun
Senior leader of the Congress and Rajya Sabha member Shakti Singh Gohil has accused the Prime Minister Narendra Modi of not fulfilling his promise of loan waiver made to the farmers of Uttarakhand. Interacting with the media persons here on Saturday Gohil who belongs to Gujarat, the home state of PM Modi and Amit Shah played an audio clip in which PM Modi is heard promising that the loans of the farmers would be waived off in the first meeting of the cabinet after installation of a BJP government in the state. Attacking the much hyped Gujarat model of development, Gohil said, “Since I was the leader of opposition when Modi was chief minister of Gujarat I am aware of his style of functioning. Gujarat attracted maximum investment in the year 1992 when it was under Congress government. Industrial areas were set up and companies like Reliance and ESSAR set up refineries. Gujarat was free from debt at that time. When Modi left the CM’s chair in the year 2014, the debt on Gujarat was more than its annual budget.’’
Accusing PM Modi for showing false sympathy with the armed forces personnel he said that when the Congress government was in Gujarat it used to provide free residential and agriculture plots to all the ex servicemen. This facility was taken away by Modi when he became the CM of Gujarat, he said. Gohil added that Modi in order to help his industrialist friends tried to snatch the agriculture farms given by the Congress government to ex-servicemen and when the High Court objected to the plan the BJP government contested the decision of the court. He said that the Congress does not believe in negative politics and has entered the assembly election in Uttarakhand with four major promises. Attacking the BJP government, the Congress leader said that in the year 2014-15 when Congress was in power in Uttarakhand six times more road length was constructed as compared with the year 2020-21.
The national spokesman of Congress, Gaurav Vallabh said that instead of waiving off the loans of the debt ridden farmers the Modi government has written off loans worth Rs eight lakh crore of the industrialists. He said that the much hyped air ambulance facility of the BJP government in Uttarakhand has remained on papers only. Vallabh said that though the state government makes tall claims about construction of roads, the Chief Minister has himself acknowledged that he was unsuccessful in getting his village connected with roads. He said that the late Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Bipin Rawat had written a letter to the state government to construct a road to his native village in Pauri district but the road was not constructed. Vallabh said that the condition of the roads in the state capital Dehradun is pathetic despite the city being in the list of smart city projects.
The general secretary (Organisation) of state Congress Mathura Dutt Joshi and media in charge of Uttarakhand Rajeev Mehrishi were present on the occasion.
