Jaipur, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday attacked the Modi government for making the farmers “suffer” and demanded that the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) be scrapped.
Addressing a public rally here, he demanded that if a farmer suffers crop loss, the government should pay for it and not the insurance companies.
“We demand that the PMFBY should be scrapped immediately and the money deducted from the farmers’ account should be returned. We don’t accept your scheme. Cancel this and stop fooling us. This scheme was started to benefit insurance companies,” he said.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader also said that people voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 Lok Sabha election because they were fed up with the Congress.
“They were hopeful that the BJP will do something. But the farmers are still suffering and killing themselves. It will not be wrong to say that the farmers are now in the worst condition ever,” he said.
“There cannot a bigger fraud with farmers other than Modi’s APMFBY. I visited Haryana two days ago and the farmers there too were unhappy with the scheme.”
Kejriwal visited Rajasthan to help break the indefinite hunger strike of AAP leader Rampal Jat — who was camping since October 23 for various demands related to farmers.
“These people (BJP) do not understand the language of the hunger strike but vote. I asked him to break his fast and to go to every village demanding that people should vote against the BJP. I am happy that he accepted my request,” Kejriwal said.
“The Congress and the BJP had made a very comfortable setting with each other to rule for alternate five years, be it in Delhi or Rajasthan. There was no option before the public. But Delhi elected the AAP removing both the national parties.”
“The work we have done in Delhi in the last three years proves that all the other political parties misguided the people for 70 years,” he added, highlighting in particular his government’s achievements in the health and education sectors.
