Chandigarh:- Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) today said they would launch a ten-day-long mass contact programme to apprise Punjab farmers and farm workers about the party’s plan to bring them out of the “debt trap”.
From October 29, the party will launch the programme with the farmers and the farm workers all across the state, Party’s Punjab affairs in-charge Sanjay Singh and State unit Convener Gurpreet Singh Waraich, told reporters here.
“The prime object of the ten-day-long programme which will commence on October 29 and culminate on November 7, will be to apprise the farmers and the labour hand about our manifesto and how we have made a commitment in it to waive off their outstanding debt by December 31 in 2018,” Singh said.
Waraich said the party would also expose the alleged “malicious and misleading propaganda” unleashed by the Congress party in Punjab “by distributing forms among all and sundry pledging a loan waiver”.
“One has to read the forms being distributed by the Congress party clearly to know its bluff. Congress is saying in the forms that it will support the debt waiver without saying it in so many words whether the party will actually do it if voted to power in 2017”, said Waraich while showing and comparing forms of both the political parties to the media.
Waraich claimed AAP in its manifesto and in the forms has clearly made a commitment with the Punjab farmers that if voted to power it would waive of the farmers’ debt by December 2018.
“Moreover, the Congress party has not laid out any plan, policy or a programme how it will actually waive off the debt of the farmers whereas the AAP clearly defined it would do so as per Sir Chhotu Ram Act,” he said.
Waraich said if the Congress party was indeed serious about farmers’ plights “who have been committing suicides during Captain Amarinder Singh’s tenure why it failed to give relief to the Punjab farmers when the UPA government was in power at the Centre for 10 years.”
“Similarly the Congress party also failed to implement MS Sawaminathan report which clearly laid stress on the fact that farmers must get at least 50 per cent profit over and above of their agricultural cost inputs,” he said.
Notably, Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh had on October 17 embarked on three-day ‘Kisan Bus Yatra’, and covered over 500 km in seven districts, with a vow to “punish” the ruling Badals for allegedly pushing the state’s farmers to suicide.
PTI
