The opposition Congress in Gujarat has stepped up its campaign against the BJP government over the alleged Rs 4,000 crore scam in the purchase of groundnuts.
The alleged scam involves purchase of groundnut at minimum support price (MSP) from farmers. The purchased groundnut have been found stolen after adulterating the same with sand and mud. It is also alleged that warehouses where the groundnut was stored were set on fire. The groundnut had gone up in flames in the past two months.
It is alleged that members of National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of INDIA (NAFED) and Gujarat Cooperative Cotton Federation Limited (GUJCOT), with the help of middlemen and politicians, stole the groundnut that was brought from farmers, and gave it to the oil millers.
Led by Gujarat Congress president Amit Chavda, opposition leader Paresh Dhanani and Congress in-charge for Gujarat Rajiv Satav, the rank and file of the party staged a dharna in Ahmedabad on Tuesday. The agitators demanded a probe by a sitting judge of the Gujarat High Court into the alleged scam.
Dhanani has also sought allotment of a place to sit on an indefinite hunger fast beginning on August 16.
If sources are to be believed, some BJP leaders are already under scanner for their alleged role in the scam. The police have arrested more than 25 persons, including representatives of cooperative organisations.
Dhanani, who hails from Saurashtra, has been trying to expose the alleged wrongdoings of the BJP government and its leaders ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
It is not for the first time that names of those having links with the BJP have surfaced in Gujarat in connection with scams. Former BJP lawmaker Nalin Kotadiya's name had figured in the the multi-crore bitcoin scam. He has been absconding.