Jhabua (Madhya Pradesh), Nov 20 (IANS): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday slammed the Congress governments for repeatedly "cheating farmers" by making "fake promises" on their loan waiver schemes and transferring the money to their cronies who were not eligible for the benefit.
"The Congress keeps talking about farmers. What has it done for them? In Karnataka, it formed a government by making fake promises to farmers. But now it's asking them to pay up or face imprisonment. When farmers turned up at their doors, they shooed them away calling them goons," Modi said in his public address at Jhabua.
Elections for the 230-member Madhya Pradesh assembly are scheduled to take place on November 28.
Modi said that the Congress party did the same in 2008 just before the 2009 general election, when it did not waive the loans as promised.
"The Congress did a similar thing in 2008. Just before the elections, it promised to waive farm loans, which amounted to six lakh crore rupees then. But it did not waive loans worth even Rs 60,000 crore.
"This scam never got the limelight because of other big scams by the Congress such as coal scam, 2G scam, and Commonwealth Games scam," he said.
Modi also referred to a certain finding by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, according to which, he said, the Congress granted loan waivers to 30-40 lakh people who were not on the rolls as beneficiaries.
"They looted the poor's money by putting it in the pocket of their cronies... Then they did not even give certificate to 1.25 crore farmers who got waivers, a proof that their loan has been waived. And these people were then made to run from office to office," Modi said.
The Prime Minister also mentioned his government's success in curbing black money sources.
"This is the power of Modi that he forced these people to come out with their black money... And now that money is being spent on public welfare schemes.
The Prime Minister said that he had plugged all sources of corruption at the top level, but one is still cheated of small amounts at the low level. To stop that, the government is using technology for transferring money directly into the bank accounts of beneficiaries.