Raipur: Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Monday promised his party would ensure “minimum income guarantee” for every poor person if it comes to power at the Centre, echoing the ‘Garibi Hatao’ (Remove Poverty) slogan coined by his grandmother Indira Gandhi during the 1971 general elections that she won.
The announcement comes ahead of the last Union Budget to be presented by the Narendra Modi government on February 1.
“This means every poor person in India will have a minimum income. This means there will be no hungry, poor people in India,” Mr Gandhi said.
“This will be a historic move. No other country in the world has taken such an initiative so far.”
Mr Gandhi gave a broad outline of the measure, saying that a fixed amount would be transferred to the account of each unemployed poor person in the country.
“We don’t want two Indias. There will be one India, and in that India, the Congress will give minimum income to every poor person. No government in the world has done this till now. The Congress is going to do that; it will be a historic feat,” Mr Gandhi said.
Projecting his party as pro-farmer, Mr Gandhi said previous Bharatiya Janata Party governments in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh had ignored the demand to waive crop loans, saying that they had no money.
The BJP-led NDA government also rejected the farmers’ plea to write off their loans offering a similar argument. The announcement was made at the Kisan Abhar Sammelan to express gratitude to farmers.
