Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi addressing a public meeting after he took out a padyatra in Telangana.
Rahul Gandhi conducted a 'padyatra' in Telangana where he visited five villages to meet families of farmers who committed suicide in the last year in the state's drought-struck Adilabad district.
He is speaking to the media after his padyatra. Here are the highlights:
- Congress used to help whenever the farmers were in trouble.
- We would increase minimum support price, and every farmer remembers when we waived farm loans worth 70,000 crore rupees.
- We increased agricultural credit by 700 per cent.
- For those farmers whose land is near cities, their land prices will appreciate exponentially.
- We think the benefit of increased land prices should go to the farmers and their children.
- We changed the land acquisition laws, and that benefitted the farmers.
- We said in that law that farmers' land should be acquired with their consent.
- When there is a hail storm or unseasonal rains, Modiji doesn't visit the farmers.
- Here in Telangana, 'mini-Modi' (Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao) doesn't see the farmers' plight.