Rahul Gandhi hails Yogi Adityanath govt's farm loan waiver, asks Centre to not discriminate among states

New Delhi: The Yogi Adityanath government received some rare praise on Wednesday after Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi expressed solidarity with the waiver of farmer loans in Uttar Pradesh. 

In a series of tweets, the Gandhi scion said that the loan waiver farmers in Uttar Pradesh is only a partial relief and sought central government's respond to ease farmers' distress across the country. 

He also asked the rival BJP, which rules both at the Centre and in Uttar Pradesh, to not discriminate amongst states.

On Tuesday evening, at the first cabinet meeting called by Yogi Adityanath, 15 days after he took oath as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister , the UP government announced that loans of less than one lakh taken by small and marginal farmers, amounting to over 30,000 crores, would be waived off. 

It also wrote off almost 6,000 crore in bad loans and said these measures would benefit 92.5 per cent of UP's farmers, who owe banks a total Rs. 62,000 crore.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said the farmers cannot stand on their feet "with half truth but with full loan waiver".

He said, "The total loans is of Rs 92,241 crore on farmers of Uttar Pradesh and government has only partially waived the crop loans of Rs 36,000 crore leaving them high and dry." 

"The Rs 56,241 crore worth of term loans on farmers of the state remain and the BJP has only befooled the farmers by announcing a populist measure that will not help them come out of distress," he said further.

Yogi Aditynath broke with the tradition of calling a cabinet meeting immediately after he was sworn in. By delaying the meet he was able to keep an election promise made by the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had said a farm loan waiver would be announced in the first cabinet meeting if the BJP came to power in UP.

The BJP had been forced to see reason, said Rahul Gandhi, who has been demanding a waiver of loans for distressed farmers across the country.

The Samajwadi Party's Akhilesh Yadav, Rahul Gandhi's partner for the UP elections, was more critical, calling the waiver announced on Tuesday a betrayal of farmers. 

"Promise was to waive the entire loan... farmers are feeling cheated as the government fixed a limit of Rs. one lakh. The poor farmers have been betrayed," Akhilesh Yadav tweeted on Tuesday.