Nashik: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said the opposition INDIA alliance, if voted to power, will be the “voice of farmers” and frame policies to protect them, promising to exclude cultivators from GST and restructure crop insurance scheme.
He was addressing a farmers’ rally at Chandwad in Maharashtra’s Nashik district along with NCP (SP) head Sharad Pawar and Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut, as part of the Congress’ ongoing ‘Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’.
“The INDIA alliance government will be the voice of farmers and work to protect their interests. Mine and our (INDIA bloc) government’s doors would always be open for farmers,” he said.
The Congress leader promised loan waiver for farmers, restructuring of a crop insurance scheme to benefit cultivators, to protect crop prices in the formulation of export-import policies, and to make efforts to exclude agriculture from GST and work on only one tax.The Lok Sabha member from Wayanad also reiterated the Congress’ promise of a legal guarantee to minimum support price (MSP) as per the Swaminathan committee report.
The former Congress president claimed that 20 to 25 people in the country have wealth equivalent to 70 crore of the country’s population.
The Narendra Modi government waived Rs 16 lakh crore debt of industrialists, he further claimed.