‘Oppn has lost credibility by raising baseless charges against govt’

Having been in the Madhya Pradesh hot seat for almost 13 years, the toughest task at hand for Shivraj Singh Chouhan, 59, is to ensure the BJP wins for a fourth successive time. Although a mood of anti-incumbency is discernible, the BJP is hoping Chouhan’s popularity will help it cross the magic figure of 116. In an interview with HT, Chouhan said he is confident of the BJP returning to power. Edited excerpts: With barely three days left for the campaign to end, what’s your assessment? We are getting a positive response from people, irrespective of whatever the opposition says, and hope that we will get a good result this time too. But don’t you see a mood of antiincumbency in the state? I don’t see any anti-incumbency. I am receiving more love and affection from the people everywhere, given the development work done by the government. How do you see the opposition capitalising on the issues of resentment among farmers, unemployment, corrup tion, demonetisation and the GST, and what will be their impact be on results? The opposition has lost its credibility for raising baseless charges against the government and me. They are desperate to get back to power. But people understand their game. The Mandsaur incident was unfortunate, but the government took action. As for scams, people have not forgotten how many scams took place during UPA regime and how the Congress regime pushed the state into backwardness. Don’t you think the BJP has erred by not announcing farm loan waiver, unlike Congress which has announced a waiver up to ~2 lakh per farmer within 10 days of its possibly coming to power? They want to mislead people with such promise. They announced a similar loan waiver in Punjab and Karnataka, but didn’t fulfill it. The fact is the BJP government took a step long back in helping farmers get rid of loans through a ‘rin samadhan’ scheme. We have been giving loans to farmers for a long time, not only at 0% interest but also they are supposed to repay ~90,000 (only) on a loan of ~1 lakh. Besides labourers of the unorganised sector, a large number of marginal farmers have been covered under Sambal scheme; they are getting subsidised electricity supply and incentives. We have decided to introduce another scheme for farmers who have small land holdings and usually don’t go to farm markets to sell their produce. They will get incentives deposited in their bank accounts on the basis of average produce in their field, even if they don’t sell the produce. Congress has announced it will set up cow shelters if it comes to power. Don’t you think they have snatched an issue from the BJP? We have already set up ‘gaushalas’ and even set up a cow sanctuary. We will further work on this. The Congress has also announced setting up of a ‘jan aayog’ to look into scams if it comes to power. What do you say? It’s the BJP government that initiated a probe into Vyapam scam and recommended a CBI probe. Whenever there were cases of corruption, the BJP government immediately took action. It’s interesting that those whose governments were known as ‘ghaplon ghotalon ki sarkar’ are levelling charges on my government. Don’t you think the Congress campaign is very sharp and aggressive this time? I don’t think so. For instance, one of their ads says ‘logon ko gussa aata hai’ (people are angry with the government). I only see anger on Congress leaders’ faces as they are not able to come to power. If everything is working in your favour, why were two meetings held with RSS leaders a few days back that was reportedly attended by Amit Shah? No such meeting took place.