Farm loan waiver a poll stunt: Mayawati

KARNAL(Haryana): Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati Sunday said that the Rs.60,000 crore (Rs.600 billion) loan waiver announced for small and marginal farmers in the national budget was nothing but a move aimed at general elections.

Addressing a rally of various communities here Sunday, Mayawati said that if the Congress was really worried about the welfare of farmers, the waiver should have come in the first budget of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and not in the last year.

"They took the step with next year's Lok Sabha elections in mind. Moreover, if they wanted the concessions to reach all farmers, why were loans from private moneylenders not covered under the waiver scheme?" she said.

She blamed both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the poverty that prevailed in the country 60 years after independence.

Mayawati's rally here was seen as an attempt to establish the BSP base in the Congress-ruled Haryana, which is due to go to the assembly polls in 2010.

Referring to Haryana, Mayawati said that if her party came to power here, she would install a non-Jat as chief minister.

"My party is not against Jats. I have many Jat ministers in my own government in Uttar Pradesh. But there has been a feeling that other communities have been governed by Jat chief ministers here," she said.