Change state, Union govts when time comes, Pawar tells farmers

NCP chief Sharad Pawar today told a gathering here to change both the state and Union government at an opportune time as they were not in favour of farmers.
Addressing a rally at the Golf Grounds here at the culmination of the NCP's 'halla bol' movement, Pawar said that the state's farm loan waiver scheme turned out to be "cheating" and "fake" and added that agricultural production was going down while farmer suicides were rising.
He said that agriculture was the backbone of the economy but the government was acquiring agricultural land for development projects like flyovers, industrial units and the like.

The former Union Agriculture Minister said that these policies were affecting farm production and asked farmers to have some members of the family look at alternate professions as well.
Pawar said that despite the toil put in by farmers, the government did not have the capacity to given them fair prices for their produce or grant them a 100 per cent loan waiver.
Hitting out at the Union government's demonetisation move, Pawar said that despite the government promising to replace old currency with new ones, over Rs 112 crore in demonetised currency was lying in district cooperative banks in Nashik, Pune and other places.

He said that the Reserve Bank of India had now written to these banks that these demonetised notes would not be replaced and the banks could write them off as losses.
He said that these acts by the government showed that it had no importance for the common man and the latter should respond by replacing the government when the time came.
Other NCP leaders also addressed the rally and criticised the Devendra Fadnavis government for failing on various fronts.