India News | Has Congress Gone Back on Farm Policies, Raju Shetti Asks Rahul

New Delhi, Feb 17 (PTI) Raju Shetti-led Swabhimani Shetkari Sangathan, a key supporter of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi, has shot off a letter to Rahul Gandhi, claiming that the state government had followed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's footsteps and slashed compensation paid to farmers under the land acquisition laws.

“Have the Congress policies changed or do the Maharashtra Congress leaders not listen to you any more,” Shetti, a two-term Lok Sabha member, said in a letter to Gandhi.

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Maharashtra Revenue Ministry, headed by Congress leader Balasaheb Thorat, had issued a notification on January 14 slashing the compensation awarded to farmers for acquisition of non-agricultural land by half from four-times of the market rate. The notification also reduced the market value of such land by 20 per cent.

He asked Gandhi to direct the Maharashtra leadership to roll back the changes to the compensation rules of the land acquisition law with immediate effect.

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Shetti reminded Gandhi that he along with activists such as Medha Patkar, Ulka Mahajan and others had opposed the land acquisition law proposed by the UPA government, which was later suitably amended in favour of farmers after the intervention of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi.

Shetti said Modi, after coming to power in 2014, had sought to ease the provisions of the land acquisition law in favour of industrialists. He said the move was shelved after strong opposition by farmers' organizations as well as the Congress, and the Centre had then left it to the state governments to relax provisions of the law.

“By deciding to halve the compensation for land acquisition, it appears that the Maharashtra government is supporting the Modi government,” Shetti, a prominent farmers' leader from western Maharashtra, said.

Shetti, who was part of the BJP-led NDA, had walked out of the alliance in August 2017 expressing dissatisfaction over Modi's handling of farmers' issues. He had joined the Congress-led UPA a year later and announced support to the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress led MVA government in Maharashtra in 2019.

Shetti is now disillusioned with the MVA and had written letters to Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, accusing the ruling alliance of ignoring smaller parties.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)