Distracted by own horse-trading agendas, BJP neglected to serve Maharashtra people: Cong

New Delhi, Apr 10 (PTI) The Congress on Wednesday alleged that the BJP has neglected the people of Maharashtra as it was distracted by its own “horse-trading and deal-making” agendas, and asked how much donation did it take to engineer the collapse of the Maha Vikas Aghadi government. Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh attacked the BJP ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally in Maharashtra’s Ramtek and posed questions on key issues affecting the state. “Today, the PM heads to Ramtek in Maharashtra, a state that was rocked by hundreds of farmer suicides last year, and where corruption charges continue to pile up. Distracted by its own horse-trading and deal-making agendas, the BJP has neglected to serve the people,” Ramesh said in a post on X. Posing questions to the prime minister, the Congress leader said that on an average day in Maharashtra, seven farmers take their own lives, and this heartbreaking statistic comes from the state’s Minister for Relief and Rehabilitation, who reported that 2,366 farmers died by suicide between January and October last year.

“He was quick to remind us that ‘The state government gives 1 lakh rupees to the kin of farmers who die by suicide’. What the Minister did not reveal is the callousness from the government that compels farmers to take such drastic steps in the first place,” he said. Ramesh claimed that 60 per cent of districts faced drought conditions last year but no help arrived from the government. “When crops were damaged by unseasonal rains in more than half of the state, farmers were extended loan waivers, but 6.56 lakh farmers were deprived of this relief due to software glitches. In the face of this state-sponsored callousness, the Congress Nyay Patra has guaranteed farmers MSP as per the Swaminathan Committee’s recommendation, a farm loan waiver with a permanent commission set up to implement it smoothly, and settlement of all crop insurance claims within 30 days,” he said.

What is the BJP’s vision to support Maharashtra’s and India’s farmers, Ramesh asked. He said that on January 4, the Joint Director of Health Services (procurement cell) in Mumbai floated a “suspicious” tender for the state’s ambulance services. This tender was first floated in September 2023, and then mysteriously scrapped, he added.

“The latest bid was floated with a notice period of just seven days, was a ten-year long contract, and carried a massive Rs 8,000 crore price tag. Despite initial interest from over 30 companies, eventually only one bidder emerged, and the final contract is expected to exceed 10,000 crores by 2034,” he said. “Many questions have been raised about this opaque process. Why wasn’t the bidding process for the new contract started sooner than January 4th, given that the old contract was about to end on Jan 31st? Why was the state unable to carry out a forensic audit of the service’s performance between 2014 and 2024?

“Why is the operational cost for ambulances so high? If the government is willing to make such a large outlay, why are ambulance services being outsourced, unlike other states where the government owns the vehicles? Is this another tender that the BJP was planning to award to one of its cronies in return for some Electoral Bonds Chanda?” he said. Ramesh said that Maharashtra’s 2022 political crisis showed the nation that the BJP’s “greed for power” is much greater than its regard for democratic values.

They did not hesitate to use their ill-gotten electoral bonds donation to buy Shiv Sena and NCP MLAs, and have destroyed Maharashtra’s political culture in the process, he alleged.

“We now know that the electoral bonds scam cost Indian citizens Rs 4 lakh crore. The question is how much chanda did it take to engineer the collapse of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) Sarkar? And what price did the people of India have to pay to keep the BJP’s horse-trading coffers full?” Ramesh said and asked the prime minister to break his silence on these issues.

The MVA came into being after the Uddhav Thackeray-led undivided Shiv Sena fell out with the BJP in 2019 and joined hands with the Congress and undivided NCP to form a government in the state.

The MVA government was, however, toppled when Eknath Shinde and several other Sena MLAs rebelled against Thackeray, and the alliance suffered another blow last year when Ajit Pawar split the NCP and joined the Shinde-led government.