NYAY will be 'tested' in Kerala: Rahul

Kottayam: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who has been pushing for Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY) –a proposed minimum income guarantee scheme, on Tuesday promised people in poll bound Kerala that the scheme will be "tested" in the southern state if the party-led UDF is voted to power.

"I have a selfish reason to test it," Gandhi said, addressing an election corner meeting organised at Manarcad in Puthuppally Assembly constituency represented by former chief minister and senior Congress leader Oommen Chandy for the last 50 years.

Flanked by Chandy and AICC general secretary K C Venugopal on a roofless campaign vehicle, Gandhi said he was confident of the success of the NYAY scheme.

A sum of Rs 72,000 a year will go straight into beneficiaries bank account."And we know what is going to happen next.We are testing a new idea in Kerala," Gandhi told party workers who gathered in large numbers around the campaign vehicle to listen to his speech.

Coining the idea during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Gandhi had described the scheme as a "ground breaking idea" to mark the beginning of the final assault on poverty.

The party, however, failed to win the Lok Sabha polls despite highlighting the NYAY promise in its manifesto. Gandhi said he wanted to "test" the scheme because if it works in Kerala, he wanted to replicate it in all the Congress ruled states in the country. "And Kerala is going to show the rest of India on how to fight poverty once and for all," he said.

Earlier, addressing a meeting at Paruthumpara near here, Gandhi said, "the first thing we are going to do when we form government in a number of days is going to start NYAY yojana."