By IANS
Nagpur : Mahatma Gandhi is still relevant in India where 70 percent of the people are dependent on agriculture, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Rajnath Singh said here as his party Thursday began a campaign tour to lobby for farmers’ support and align itself with the apostle of non violence.
Hoping to attract a million farmers along the way, the BJP has chosen Gandhi’s ashram Bapu Kutir in Wardha, about 70 km from here, as its starting point. The ‘yatra’ will end in Yavatmal about 100 km away on Friday evening when Singh will address a rally.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, the BJP president said that an agitation aimed at ensuring a fair deal to farmers in villages, where Gandhi’s India lives, could have no better starting point.
He was answering a question on why he did not choose Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) founder K.B. Hedgewar’s memorial in Nagpur as the procession’s starting point.
“Farmers were never more distressed than in the present United Progressive Alliance (UPA) dispensation,” Singh said, squarely blaming the “anti-farmer policies” of the Manmohan Singh government for the continuing agrarian crisis.
The failure of the prime minister’s farm relief package to control farmers’ suicides in Vidarbha bears this out, the former agriculture minister said. He added that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would ensure prices based on production cost and cheaper loans to the farmers if it came to power in the next elections.
“The farm loan under our dispensation will be free from interest in the first year of its disbursal,” Singh said, reminding the reporters that the National Commission of Farmers that came out with a fair and pragmatic set of recommendations was set up during the NDA rule.
The BJP president ruled out any role for Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi at the party’s national level as he was shouldering the responsibility of his state.
Dismissing the suggestion that Modi’s victory had made him uncomfortable, Singh said nothing could be more pleasant for any party chief than seeing his party come to power in a state for the third successive term.
He clarified that there was no proposal before the party to facilitate the return of former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharati to the party fold.