Chaudhary said the CM was trying to showcase how the BJP state government and its departments concerned with agriculture and farming were doing a great job and helping farmers become prosperous.
Farmers shout slogans while blocking railway tracks during a protest. (Photo by NARINDER NANU / AFP)
As the Congress launched its ‘kheti bachao’ protest in Punjab under Rahul Gandhi’s leadership today, Congress MLA Kunal Chaudhary in Madhya Pradesh alleged that ‘fake’ farmers were presented at a function of MP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and demanded the chief minister submit a public apology for the fraud done by officials.
Addressing a Press conference here today along with MP Congress media cell vice-president Bhupendra Gupta and young Congress leader Puneet Tandon, Kunal Chaudhary claimed that while interacting with the ‘fake’ farmers at a function recently, the MP chief minister tried to show how those farmers had not only succeeded in increasing their production but were also earning lakhs through just a small agricultural field of three acres.
Advertisement
Chaudhary said the CM was trying to showcase how the BJP state government and its departments concerned with agriculture and farming were doing a great job and helping farmers become prosperous.
Advertisement
Chaudhary, however, claimed that when a genuine farmer got impressed by the programme and tried to contact the agriculture and horticulture departments for getting more information about the farmers in the event, he was first refused any information and then threatened by some officials to never call again.
The Congress MLA went on to claim that when the said farmer pursued the matter, some official of the horticulture department gave him the phone number of one of the farmers shown in the CM’s event.
“When this farmer called up on that number, the person on the other side could not even tell the difference between an acre and hectare and he did not even have experience in farming of garlic, about which he was speaking during the CM’s event,” Chaudhary claimed.
Chaudhary averred that the fraud of the BJP state government and its officials had been exposed through this incident. The Congress MLA demanded that the chief minister tender a public apology to farmers of the state and also immediately dismiss from service the officials responsible for such a fraud.
Advertisement
