Congress to launch nation-wide campaign for farmers` rights: Babbar

Aligarh (UP): Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) chief Raj Babbar said on Thursday that farmers were feeling cheated under the BJP rule at the Centre and in the state and that his party will give voice to their problems.

The party will launch a nation-wide campaign to secure justice for farmers, he said.

Kicking off the party's state-wide "haq maango abhiyan" yatra (march for rights), he said that farmers all over the country were feeling cheated because they were being deprived of cheap inputs on one hand while on the other, the government was misleading them on the issue of minimum support price.

Accusing Narendra Modi government of deceiving the people on the issue of jobs for rural youth, Babbar said the ruling party had made false promises in this regard.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi will become the voice of the farmers, Babbar said adding that the party will launch nation-wide campaign to get them justice.

Referring to the firing on farmers in Madhya Pradesh, he said that when unarmed farmers demanded their rights but they were shot at and six of them had to pay with their lives.

Babbar claimed that the Centre was writing off the debts of a select group of corporates but farmers were being harassed over loans and were being pushed to the brink.

The Congress will lead a campaign in all the 75 districts of UP to express solidarity with the farmers and jobless youth, he said.

The party has coined the slogan "na karzmafi, na rozgar ka mauka, prachand bahumat, phir bhi prachand dhokha" (no loan waiver, no jobs; but betrayal despite massive mandate) for the campaign, which Gandhi is also expected to join.

The campaign has been started at Gandhi's behest to highlight the plight of farmers and the youth and as to how they have been hoodwinked by this government which had promised loan waiver and jobs for them, Congress leaders said.