more-in Rebutting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s charge that the Congress had merely used farmers as a vote bank during its seven-decade rule least caring for their welfare, AICC general secretary in-charge of Andhra Pradesh on Thursday asserted that the Congress, if voted to power at the Centre, would waive the loans advanced to the farmers. ‘PM failed farmers’ It was the Prime Minister who failed to keep his promises to the farmers. The peasants were finding it difficult to realise remunerative price for their produce, Mr. Chandy said while interacting with the party workers in Nellore. “The first order that will be signed by UPA III will be the one on Special Category Status (SCS),” he said. Mr. Chandy asked the party workers to put flexi boards in every village with pictures of party president Rahul Gandhi and his grandmother Indira Gandhi, covering, among other poll promises, debt waiver to the farmers and SCS to A.P. He asserted that Dugarajapatnam port sanctioned by the UPA government would be implemented at any cost. Even the ?277-crore railway line had been sanctioned. But the governments led by the BJP at the Centre and the TDP in the State did precious little to implement the project, allegedly to favour a private player, Mr. Chandy charged. Polavaram project It was Congress-led government at the Centre that had provided national project status to Polavaram, he said, and sought an explanation from the Union and State governments on the escalation of the project cost to a whopping ?58,000 crore from a mere ?16,000 crore earlier. The TDP MPs protesting against the Centre at the fag end of the term would not carry conviction as the regional party shared power with the BJP both at the Centre and in the State till recently, he said. Coordination committees would be constituted in each of the 175 Assembly constituencies to restore the past glory of the party in the State that had stood by it even during tough times, he added.

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