The Congress beat anti-incumbency in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections with the help of farmers' votes and rode back to power, surprising political pundits and psephologists. In 2018, the party wrested power from the BJP in Madhya Pradesh after a gap of 15 years. Again, according to political analysts, angry farmers' votes against the ruling BJP were the main reason for the Congress's victory.
The Congress's decision to waive farmers' loans up to Rs 3 lakh was the game changer in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. With that one move, the Congress managed to win over the hearts of farmers across the country. The 2018 assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh also witnessed the Congress offering sops to farmers in the manifesto and that paid off.
The Congress came back to power in Madhya Pradesh after 15 years, riding on the wave of pro-farmer promises. However, after taking over the reins of the state in November last year, the party seems to have forgotten the fact that its core voters are farmers living in the rural belt.
Otherwise, what is the reason for a strange move by the new government? Barely two months after forming the government, the Congress 'justified' the police firing and lathi-charge on a farmers' rally by the BJP government, led by then chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, in which six farmers were killed in Mandsaur district in June 2017.
Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Bala Bachchan, in a written reply to a question by MLA Harsh Gehlot of ruling Congress, said, “Malhargarh’s sub-divisional magistrate Shravan Bhandari had ordered the police firing at Pipalyamandi in Mandsaur district on June 6, 2017, to disperse a mob. This was for self-defence and prevention of damage to public and private property during an agitation by farmers.”
Apart from sending shock waves across the farmers' community in the state, the minister’s reply also baffled and embarrassed his own party leaders. Senior Congress leader and former chief minister Digvijaya Singh told mediapersons in Bhopal, “The home minister's reply appears to have given a clean chit to the BJP government on the police firing incident in Mandsaur. We cannot accept this.”
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath said, “I won’t comment on it; our home minister will address a press conference on this.”
Kamal Nath was speaking to mediapersons after having a round-table meeting with 61 industrialists and business executives at Minto Hall International Convention Centre in Bhopal.
Two hours after Kamal Nath's press conference, the home minister maintained that the government has not given a clean chit to the previous BJP regime. “The reply was made on the basis of investigation and a report prepared by BJP government,” the minister clarified.
However, why the Congress government went ahead with a BJP government report to answer its own MLA's question in the house is not clear yet. The minister's reply has angered the farmers and even some Congress leaders in the state.
After the police firing incident, Congress president Rahul Gandhi was stopped by the then BJP regime from meeting the family members of the firing victims.
Gandhi left the state without seeing the victims. Madhya Pradesh Congress campaign committee head Jyotiraditya Scindia, who too was stopped on his way to violence-hit Mandsaur, sat on a dharna in the state capital then.
Mandsaur had become the epicentre of the farmers' agitation then, with the Congress attempting to cash in on the unrest in the largely agrarian state during its crucial November 2018 assembly election campaign.
Since then, the issue of farmers’ unrest became a central point for the Congress during its poll campaign. Congress leaders across Madhya Pradesh criticised the BJP government's action of ordering firing on farmers, and Chouhan announced a slew of welfare schemes to woo back the farmers ahead of the polls.
On the first anniversary of the firing incident on June 6, 2018, and five months before the crucial assembly elections in the state, Gandhi, at a public meeting in Mandsaur, announced that the Congress would waive farmers’ loans within 10 days of coming to power.
In its manifesto titled Vachan Patra (document of promise), the Congress tried to woo farmers by promising a social security pension of Rs 1,000 per month to farmers above 60 years of age with land holding below 2.5 acre. Some other sops were a 50 per cent subsidy on loans for agriculture equipment, halving the power bill rates, a bonus on the MSP of some crops and a subsidy of Rs 5 per litre on procured milk.
In the elections, the Congress won 114 seats, falling two seats short of absolute majority of 116 in a 230-member house. The grand old party took the support of two BSP MLAs, one Samajwadi Party legislator and four independents to form the government.
After the Congress formed the government, Kamal Nath cleared the farm loan waiver of Rs 2 lakh each for indebted farmers. “After joining this post (of chief minister), the first file I have signed is of farm loan waiver of Rs 2 lakh each, as I had promised to the farmers,” Kamal Nath had told mediapersons.
Interestingly, the farm distress and anger of farmers did not make any impact in Mandsaur Lok Sabha constituency in the November 2018 assembly elections. Of the eight assembly seats in Mandsaur Lok Sabha seat spread over three districts, the BJP retained the seats of Mandsaur and Garoth (in Mandsaur district), Neemuch, Manasa and Jawad (in Neemuch district) and Jaora (in Ratlam district).
Surprisingly, in Mandsaur’s Malhargarh assembly seat, where the farmers were shot by cops, BJP’s Jagdish Dewda, a former home minister, won.
The Congress's 'justification' of police firing on farmers by the BJP government is unlikely to go well with its vote bank of the rural belt. The government may have to do some corrective measures to woo back the farmers if it wants to win the 29 Lok Sabha seats in the coming elections, which is very crucial for the party for its battle against Narendra Modi's BJP.
Via onmanorama
