Prime Minister Narendra Modi and NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar. (PTI/File Photo)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi once again launched a blistering attack on NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar on Tuesday, accusing him of doing little to alleviate the miseries of farmers when he was the Union agriculture minister or for his constituency people when he was the Madha MP.
On Monday, during his first election rally in the Pawar bastion since the NCP’s split, the Prime Minister had hit out at Pawar indirectly, calling him “bhatakti aatma” (a wandering soul), who he said tried to destabilise the BJP-Shiv Sena government in 1995.
Addressing an election rally for BJP candidate Ranjitnaik Nimbalkar in the Malshiras area under the Madha constituency, without naming Pawar, the Prime Minister said, “A heavyweight leader from Maharashtra was the agriculture minister in Congress government at the Centre. During his time, the FRP (fair and remunerative price) for sugarcane was Rs 200 per quintal. Now during the Modi rule, the sugarcane FRP is Rs 340 per quintal.”
Speaking at another rally in Latur, Modi said the opposition Congress reaped benefits from problems and thus did not want to solve them. Addressing a public rally here, he urged people to ensure the voting percentage increases and said Latur can play an important part in ‘Viksit Bharat’.
In Madha, PM Modi said sugarcane farmers had to make rounds of the Sugar Commissionerate to get their payment when Pawar was the agriculture minister. He said from the 1990s, sugar mills were hassled by income tax department. “This leader used to be the agriculture minister. I as chief minister of Gujarat used to urge him to do something to resolve the income tax problems of sugar mills. I wrote several letters to him and also met him. But he did nothing. When the NDA government came to power, we gave Rs 10,000 crore relief to the sugar mills… We waived off old income tax demands and resolved legal issues as well. This benefitted our sugarcane farmers… From March 2023, we have made a Rs 10,000 crore special loan provision so that they can make faster payments to sugarcane farmers and ensure good production,” he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a rally in Dharashiv on Tuesday. (PTI)
When Pawar was the agriculture minister, Modi said, the then Congress government purchased agricultural produce worth Rs 7 lakh crore from the farmers. “But in the last 10 years, we have purchased agricultural produce worth Rs 20 lakh crore. There cannot be any comparison between these purchases,” he said.
The PM said as Madha MP, Pawar had promised to resolve the water crisis of the constituency. “Fifteen years ago, one top leader had come to contest from here… Then he had taken an oath that he would ensure water to the drought-hit area. But did he ensure water for you? No. He did nothing to resolve your problem. He did not have the guts to again contest the election from here… Isn’t it time to punish him?”
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Modi said in the last 60 years, Congress PMs kept parroting the line “garibi hatao”. “Other than repeating the line, the Congress did nothing. When my government came to power, in the last 10 years we have pulled 25 crore people out of poverty,” he said.
He said when the government in Delhi used to release funds for farmers, the Congress “hand” used to gobble it up. “Now, this son of yours is sitting in Delhi…The amount released from Delhi goes directly to your account.”
At his rally in Latur, Modi said, “Be it the government of Devendra Fadnavis or Eknath Shinde, we have always worked to solve problems. Projects like Jalyukta Shivar, Marathwada Water Grid project are meant to solve the water woes of Latur. Congress never wanted to solve problems in fact they reaped political benefits from them so they linger over them.” He said the Congress and INDIA bloc had tried to oppose these schemes.
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More
Partha Sarathi Biwas is an Assistant Editor with The Indian Express with 10+ years of experience in reporting on Agriculture, Commodities and Developmental issues. He has been with The Indian Express since 2011 and earlier worked with DNA. Partha's report about Farmers Producer Companies (FPC) as well long pieces on various agricultural issues have been cited by various academic publications including those published by the Government of India. He is often invited as a visiting faculty to various schools of journalism to talk about development journalism and rural reporting. In his spare time Partha trains for marathons and has participated in multiple marathons and half marathons. ... Read More
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a rally in Dharashiv on Tuesday. (PTI)
