Deceiving farmers is for nobody's good: FM Sitharaman in Rajya Sabha

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday said deceiving farmers cannot do good to anybody as she attacked the Congress on their farm loan waiver scheme, alleging that their promises left the farmers in lurch.

During her reply in Rajya Sabha on The Banking Laws (Amendment), 2024 Bill, the finance minister took a cue from BRS member Ravi Chandra Vaddiraju's statement in Telugu during the discussion where he referred to Congress loan waiver scheme for farmers.

Sitharaman said Congress announced "Rina maafi" (loan waiver), but in reality... half the farmers were left without loan waiver, the banks had put their name on record thereby making them also ineligible for new loans.

"I would want to highlight the fact that deceiving the farmers is for nobody's good. If you really want to help the farmers, here is Prime Minister Modi putting Rs 2,000 every time, annually, 6,000 rupees into their account through the transparent DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer). It helps the small farmers. Show it in action," she asserted.

Sitharaman said Congress policies have been limited to paper without any action on ground and if there was any action then it was riddled with corruption.

"I want to highlight like the way they speak about food security, MGNREGA and the rural areas, all schemes brought by them (but) none of which were effectively implemented. When Prime Minister Modi implements them, without corruption, without malpractice and without any kind of wrongdoing. They will say, oh that was our scheme. Yes, it was your scheme, but you kept it in the paper, or you mismanaged," the minister said.

Sitharaman said that Congress' policies have all been big time talk with "no action on the ground and if there's action, it's riddled with corruption" .

The finance minister said that she received information from the media that Congress used the farm loan waiver promise to come back to power in 2009.

"So instead of serving the farmers, the Congress's notorious 2008 (promise), by which we were told through the media, that they won election and came back in 2009, that notorious Rina Maafi had left many farmers, neither here nor there," she said.

Later DMK member Tiruchi Siva raised objection to the use of word "notorious" calling an unparliamentary word and sought its removal from the record.

Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankar said that he will examine the point of order raised by Siva around the word "notorious" and take action suitably.