Rahul says PM brought land bill to 'pay back' industrialists

Congress top brass today launched an all-out attack on the government with Rahul Gandhi declaring that he would be in the vanguard against any move to hurt farmers' interests and accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of bringing the land bill to "pay back huge loans" taken from corporates in the Lok Sabha polls.
While Sonia Gandhi accused the government of rubbing salt on the wounds of the farmers hit hard by unseasonal rains and hailstorm, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the new land bill was nothing but an attempt to weaken the 2013 Act that was aimed at empowering the farmers.

At a well-attended rally here which was seen as a platform to project Rahul, the Congress leadership vowed to fight tooth and nail the attempts by the Modi dispensation to weaken the farmers and benefit the "industrialists".
The thrust of Sonia, Rahul as also Manmohan Singh was that Modi led people, including farmers, up the garden path before last year's polls and now was bringing anti-farmers policies.
"Enough is enough," said Sonia Gandhi.
Rahul, who returned to pulic life after a two-month absence, slammed Modi for his comments during the just-concluded foreign visit in which he had talked about "cleaning up the mess", saying the remarks on foriegn soil against previous governments does not behove the post of Prime Minister.

"I will tell you how Modi ji won the election. He took loans of thousands of crores from big industrialists from which his marketing was done," Rahul said at the farmers' rally at Ramlila ground here.

"How will he pay back that loan now? He will do it by giving your land to those top industrialists. He wants to weaken the farmers, then snach their land and give it to his industrialist friends," he said.
The Congress Vice President said that through the Gujarat model, Modi showed that he can snatch the land of farmers quite easily and "convinced the industrialists that he can do the same in the whole country".

"This is Modi's model -- weaken the foundation, then attach a ladder to the building, paint it bright and show to the world that the building is shining when in fact it has become hollow," he said.
The rally organised by the party was significant as it came on the eve of the second phase of the Budget session of Parliament, which is expected to be stormy affair in the wake of growing confrontation over the land bill issue.