‘Cong defrauding farmers on kurki’

The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Wednesday said the Congress government was playing a fraud on farmers and Dalits by resorting to cheap gimmicks like doing away with “kurki” (attachment of properties) which was never implemented in the last 10 years of SAD-BJP regime, besides renaming schemes instead of fulfilling poll promises like complete farm loan waiver and hiking social welfare benefits.

In a statement, former minister and SAD general secretary Bikram Majithia said the “deceit and doublespeak of the Congress government could be gauged from the fact that it announced that it had done away with kurki of debt-ridden farmers”.

“One only has to read the fine print to realise that kurki has been done away with only in case of loans taken from cooperative banks. Such loans constitute only 10-15% of the total loans taken by Punjab farmers,” he said.

The former minister said even this was a publicity stunt. “Everyone knows that the SADBJP government did not let the cooperative department implement this law. No kurki was carried out in the 10-year rule of the SAD-BJP government,” he said.

The SAD-BJP government also passed the Punjab Settlement of Agriculture Indebtedness Bill, 2016, and such pathbreaking legislation ensured government regulated settlement of farmers’ loans.