Union Minister Smriti Irani was in for a surprise on Wednesday, 8 May, when at a rally in Madhya Pradesh's Ashok Nagar, she purportedly asked if farm loans were waived, to which shouts of “Yes, we have got it" can be heard from the crowd.
"Smriti Irani has been humiliated. In Madhya Pradesh's Ashok Nagar, Smriti Irani asked from the stage whether farmers' loans have been waived. In the middle of the meeting, farmers shouted to say 'Yes it has been done.’ Now, even the public is giving a direct answer to these lies. 'At least, you should stop spreading lies now'," the MP Congress said in a tweet in Hindi.
However, the authenticity of the video cannot be verified and it is not clear as to how many were saying that the loans have been waived.
Agrarian distress and farm loan waivers are planks that the Congress has given considerable attention to in the ongoing general elections. During the Assembly elections late last year in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh too, the Congress had focused on agrarian distress as a central issue.
Irani is pitted against Rahul Gandhi in Uttar Pradesh's Amethi, where she had lost in 2014 by a margin of around one lakh votes.
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