lok-sabha-elections

Updated: Mar 25, 2019 01:02 IST

Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s tweet on alleged unpaid dues worth ?10,000 crore for farmers in the “sugarcane belt” of Uttar Pradesh sparked a slugfest on Twitter with chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Sunday. The Uttar Pradesh CM asked the Congress leader where the well-wishers of farmers were between 2012 and 2017 when farmers in the state “faced starvation”.

Adityanath asserted that his government has made record payments to cane farmers in the state. “When our government was formed, the pending cane dues were around ?57,800 crore. The amount was bigger than the budgets of many states. But we paid it… Previous SP-BSP governments did nothing for sugarcane farmers which resulted in them getting struck by penury,” Adityanath said.

Earlier during the day, Priyanka Gandhi had attacked the state government over the alleged unpaid dues of sugarcane farmers, claiming in a tweet that “chowkidars” (watchmen) were only working for the rich, not for the poor.

The region of the state that votes in the first phase of the 2019 Lok Sabha election on April 11 in western UP is widely referred to as the “cane belt”. The opposition had earlier raised the issue of farmers’ due ahead of the Kairana bypolls in 2018, which the BJP had lost.

Priyanka’s tweet was taken by the BJP camp as a ploy to provoke the same sentiments in the region, local leaders said.

The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), whose votebank is largely centered on farm politics, too has been raising the issue of the farmers’ arrears. The RLD is contesting polls in alliance with Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

Congress’s in-charge of western UP Jyotiraditya Scindia also targeted the BJP governments at the Centre and the state. “The pending sugarcane dues of ?10,000 crore are a big example of ineffectiveness of the present government. Farmers of Meerut, Baghpat, Kairana, Saharanpur, Bijnor and Muzaffarnagar would respond to this injustice on April 11,” Scindia tweeted.

UP BJP leader Chandramohan, who hails from western UP, said, “We have several achievements to our credit and we dare the opposition to challenge them. Unlike in the past when sugar mills were closed and sold, when sugar cane dues weren’t cleared, our government has not only cleared record dues, including payments pending from SP rule but also provided better facilities to them,” he said.

Also read: Priyanka Gandhi hits back after PM Modi’s attack, says people can see through