eee‘Centre has spent Rs 2,200 cr on ads’

eeMUMBAI: The Union government is spending Rs 2,200 crore on advertisement in 900 cities to highlight their achievement in last three years while on the other hand farmers are crying for help but the government is killing them with bullets, alleged senior Congress leader and former Union minister Sachin Pilot on Friday. 

On the backdrop of violent protests by farmers in Madhya Pradesh, Pilot alleged that the BJP only used the farmers as vote-banks and the announcement of loan waiver for farmers was only an election tool to get into power.

Farmers are protesting in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh and the government is ignoring it. But they are interested in showing their three years of governance to the public. “The police are killing innocent farmers brutally. And the government is not ready to announce loan waiver to them,” said Pilot. 

“If the government could not fulfil the announcement made by them before the Lok Sabha polls, why did it they promise it?” he asked. 

Referring to Rahul Gandhi’s arrest at the border of Mandsaur on Wednesday, Pilot said that the Congress Vice President did not go there to make political statements but to meet farmers’ families, who wanted to meet him. 

Pilot said that the ‘insensitiveness’ of Prime Minister Narendra Modi became apparent when he did not tweet a word condemning and expressing grief over the killings of farmers.

He said that Opposition parties are working to collate as a united front to take on the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. “There is a coalition of Opposition parties happening now as everybody has started realising the need to work together against the BJP,” he said. 

While criticising the Shiv Sena, he said that the party has double standards. Shiv Sena is often critical of the government policies in Maharashtra. “If they are so concerned for the cause of farmers, why don’t they come out of the power?” he asked.

“If you said anything against the BJP, then you would be anti-national, this new term the BJP has invented in the country,” he  added.