Farmers Movement Archive

Digvijaya Singh accuses Centre of selling country’s assets

PATNA: Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister and Congress’s Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh on Thursday compared the NDA government at the Centre with a “prodigal son” who sells everything he inherits. He also described Bihar CM Nitish Kumar as a puppet of the BJP who has “compromised with the ideologies of Rammanohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan”. Talking to mediapersons at the Sadaquat Ashram here, Digvijaya hit out at the central government over various issues, including unemployment, price rise, farm laws, Pegasus and launch of National Monetisation Pipeline scheme. Raising the issue of National Monetisation Pipeline, he said, “An able son keeps what he has inherited by his ancestors intact. However a ‘nalayak’ or prodigal son sells what he inherits and even takes loan to eat butter. PM Narendra Modi used to say that Congress has done nothing in 70 years. I want to ask what are they selling now? They even want to sell off Bharat Petroleum which earns an annual profit of Rs 8,000 crore to Rs 10,000 crore.” He added various initiatives of the previous Congress governments, such as Right to Education, Right to Food and Right to Information, helped the common people. Digvijaya also slammed the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and accused it of trying to dilute the Constitution. “Politics is done on the basis of ideology. While Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan believed in socialist ideology, RSS believes in ideology of communalism. Since 1925, it has been concentrating on its agenda of working against the poor, suppressed, farmers and workers,” he added. Digvijaya also raised the issue of removal of chapters on Jayaprakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia from the postgraduate syllabus of political science in JP University. “By parting with the ideologies of JP and Lohia, Nitish has surrendered before the RSS and BJP,” he said. Reacting to Digvijaya’s allegations, BJP state spokesperson Prem Ranjan Patel said the country’s economy was on the recovery path and several schemes launched by the Centre have helped the people in rural areas. “The income of farmers will double by next year. Monetary benefits are now being directly transferred to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries. The entire world is listening to us and credit for this goes to the PM,” he added. Patel said the RSS always works for the suppressed section of the society. “The basic principle of the RSS is ‘antyodaya’. It works for the benefit of the person at the lowest strata.”

The Times of India

2021-09-03

Patna