Balasore, Apr 26 (UNI) Congress president Rahul Gandhi today promised to enact a new law for the benefit of farmers if his party voted to power.
Addressing a Parivartan Sankalp Samabesh at Remuna in Balasore district, Mr Gandhi said the proposed law would have the provision not to put farmers in jail if they failed to repay the loan.
The Congress president asked why the farmers should be sent to jail if they are not able to pay back their bank loan while big businessmen like Nirav Modi and Vijay Malaya were allowed to leave the country after cheating banks of crores of rupees and leading a lavish life in foreign countries.
Mr Gandhi also promised to present a special budget for the farmers of Odisha, Chhatisgarh and Rajasthan a day before the presentation of the national budget to help the farmers of these states.
He said the proposed budget would have detail provision to increase the MSP of paddy, setting up of Food processing units, market linkage of agriculture produce and all other provisions that would benefit the farmers.
The Congress president also promised to increase the MSP of paddy in Odisha to Rs 2600 per quintal and to conduct a surgical strike on poverty in the country by depositing Rs 6000 per month in the accounts of a woman member of each of the five crore poor families in the country to make them financially sound.
Mr Gandhi said the money would be provided to the poor families whose monthly income is less than Rs 12,000.
He said poor states like Odisha, Bihar and Chhattisgarh would get the maximum benefit out of it.
The Congress president said unemployment is the biggest problem of the country and announced that over 22 lakh posts lying vacant would be filled up within one year.
The Prime Minister, he said, did not take any initiative to fill up these vacancies and also miserably failed his promise to create two crore jobs every year.
Instead of creating jobs, many people lost employment after the BJP government implemented GST and demonetization, he remarked.
Mr Gandhi said while Congress works for development, brotherhood, and amity, the BJP, RSS are indulging in dividing and spreading hatred among the community.
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