Rahul slams Modi; Cong upbeat over new avatar

IN HOUSE Cong vice-president asks PM to acquaint himself with farmers’ misery

NEW DELHI: A combative Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday kept up his attack on the NDA government over the farm crisis, asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi to acquaint himself with the misery of farmers.

The Congress vice-president attacked the government in the Lok Sabha a day after taking a train to Punjab and visiting mandis or grain markets where anger has been mounting as farmers were finding it difficult to sell their produce after unseasonal rain and hailstorms battered ripe winter crops.

“Our Prime Minister is on a tour of India right now. He has come here for some days. He should go to Punjab for some time and meet the farmers and talk to them in mandis,” he said. “Farmers in mandis are crying with pain in their hearts.”

Union food processing minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal, whose husband Sukhbir Singh Badal is the Punjab deputy chief minister, immediately jumped to Modi’s defence, asking Gandhi to go to his constituency Amethi and see the plight of farmers there. She wondered where he was when farmers were facing the fury of hailstorms, apparently referring to his 53-day sabbatical. Food minister Ram Vilas Paswan hit back, too, saying the Congress leader was trying to become a “martyr by cutting a finger”.

Congress leaders were upbeat to see Gandhi in a new avatar: his blistering attacks on the NDA government that he had called a “suit-boot ki sarkar”. His aggressive tone and tenor in and outside Parliament appears to have galvanised the party cadre.

Since his return on April 16, Gandhi has spoken thrice in the Lok Sabha – twice on farmer issues and once on net neutrality — besides addressing a kisan rally at Ramlila Maidan.

On Thursday, he will launch a countrywide mass contact programme with a padyatra in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region, where many debt-trapped farmers have committed suicide over the past four months.

CONTINUED ON P8

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