'Misleading the House': Congress to move privilege motion against Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan

NEW DELHI, August 5: Congress has decided to bring a privilege motion against the Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for misleading the house on various counts.

Addressing a press conference here, Congress MPs Randeep Singh Surjewala and Digvijaya Singh alleged that Chouhan misled the house by telling lies.

Surjewala said while Prime Minister Narendra Modi has always been claiming to provide farmers MSP on input costs plus fifty percent, in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court on February 6, 2015, the BJP government had said that it was not possible. He wanted to know what was the actual truth.

Surjewala also challenged the union agriculture minister’s assertion that the farmers do not need MSP as they were getting prices over and above the MSP on various crops.

Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh alleged that Chouhan was a habitual liar. Disputing the claims made by Chouhan that when he (Digvijaya Singh) left office in 2003, only 7 lakh hectares of land in Madhya Pradesh were irrigated, he said, while 33 lakh hectares of land in the state were irrigated in 1997-98.

He also disputed the claims of Chouhan that the Congress government had not provided any debt waiver to the farmers. He said during the Chief Ministership of Kamal Nath in MP, the debt of 37 lakh farmers had been waived off.