Will keep pressure on till you don’t waive farm loans: Rahul Gandhi to PM

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, December 18

Congress president Rahul Gandhi today declined questions on the conviction of former party MP Sajjan Kumar in the anti-Sikh carnage of 1984 and said he was speaking to the press on the issue of farm loan waiver and Rafale and the fact that PM Narendra Modi has created two Indias, one for the poor and the other for the rich.

In an impromptu press interaction in Parliament, Gandhi attacked PM Modi for failing to waive farm loans and instead waiving Rs 3.5 lakh crore worth of loans of 15 corporates. 

He accused the PM of stealing money from the poor and filling the coffers of the rich through demonetisation, “the biggest scam of the world”.

Flanked by senior Congress leaders, Gandhi said the entire Opposition would force the government to waive farmers loans. “We won’t let the PM sleep at night and will force a loan waiver,” Gandhi said amid reports that the government was planning a major farm loan waiver before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

“This press conference is about farmers and the failure of the government to waive off even a single rupee of loans,” said Gandhi. On Rafale, he said, “We will force a JPC probe. The government is escaping discussion.”

Meanwhile, the Assam Government has approved a Rs 600-crore farm loan waiver to benefit around eight lakh farmers in the state. 

‘Will force waiver’

"We will force a loan waiver. We want to ask the government when it will waive farm loans. We (Opposition) won’t let PM sleep till the loan waiver"  Rahul Gandhi

New low, says BJP

"This is a new low in the public discourse of the country… nothing better can be expected from Gandhi, whose party ensured that Indians did not sleep during its 60 years of rule." Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister