Ryots' debt waiver is propaganda: Sushma

Shajapur, MP, Mar 2 (UNI) Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former union minister Sushma Swaraj today denounced the Centre's Congress-led United Progressive Alliance regime's debt waiver, for farmers, as ''propaganda'' and pointed out that peasants who availed debts from non-institutional sources would be deprived of the Rs 60,000-crore sop.

''The Centre is indulging in sentimental exploitation of cultivators who actually need crop income security. Ryots' profit should be measured against sown area and crop. If any deprivation is observed there then the government should fill the gap,'' she said at the BJP's Jan Ashirwad Rally here.

Discussing the predecessor National Democratic Alliance regime's tenure, Ms Swaraj said that the then agriculture minister Rajnath Singh drafted a Farmers' Income Guarantee Scheme that would be gifted to peasants if a BJP-led government assumed the reins at the Centre.

Praising the pro-cultivator work being undertaken by Madhya Pradesh's BJP regime, she said, ''the government provided security to five lakh agricultural labourers by having them registered. The amount of work done in the roads, power and social welfare sectors over the past four years is unparalleled since independence.'' BJP state President Narendra Singh Tomar alleged that the Centre slashed the state's power, kerosene and gas quotas.

UNI AG-AC 1810