In Amethi, Rahul Gandhi raises pitch over food park; Modi govt hits back

Amethi/New Delhi:  Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Monday raised the pitch over the mega food park in his Amethi Lok Sabha constituency as he toured the area and alleged “politics of revenge”, attracting sharp reaction from the government which accused him of “spreading falsehood”. [caption id=“attachment_2250766” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi during his visit to Amethi on Monday. PTI[/caption] The 44-year-old Congress vice president marched through the dusty pathways of Amethi to reach the site of the scrapped project, saying he had come here to expose the “bluff” of the Centre which has maintained that the responsibility for its cancellation lay with the promoter company and the previous UPA government. “Land had been allotted. Work was very much underway,” he said, while alleging that “food park project has been snatched from us as per a well-planned conspiracy”. While targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gandhi said “BJP wants to hurt me through this politics of revenge. But in reality, the farmers are getting affected, not me. BJP is playing such politics in other states as well, like Punjab, Telangana, Maharashtra and Haryana, wherever farmers can be suppressed.” He said the food park would have benefitted farmers of 10 districts as they could directly send their produce to the processing units. Addressing a gathering of farmers in Mirzagarh village, Gandhi asserted that “we will not be cowed down and would pressure the government to get it (food park project) back”. At a ‘kisan panchayat’ in Shankargarh area, he said Prime Minister Narendra Modi “never went to the house of any farmer. He does not know the pain of the farmers.” In Delhi, Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur accused Gandhi of spreading “falsehood” and playing a “mega fraud” on the people, insisting that promoters of the project were pursuing a power plant in the name of food park. She said the decision to deny any further extension to project was taken in March last year when UPA was in power and asked Gandhi to do his “homework”. “Neither Rahul nor his party was serious to set up the food park… Rahul is spreading falsehood,” Kaur told reporters and questioned where the Congress leader was all the while since the project was cancelled in July last year. “When I saw the file, it was shocking to note that in the name of mega food park, they were spreading mega lies. If you see their proposed revenue model, after getting cheap gas, they proposed to earn 62 per cent revenue from power generation,” the union minister said. She spoke to the media while Gandhi was touring Amethi, his Lok Sabha constituency, alleging that the Modi government had cancelled the project because of “politics of revenge” and therefore hit the farmers badly. Kaur said food processing, which was projected as the purpose for setting up of the unit, was given only a fraction of revenue in the proposal. Citing documents, she alleged that the permission to Shaktiman Mega Foodpark for setting up of the unit at Amethi was done in “haphazard manner”. “The show-cause notice to the promoter asking why the allocation of food park should not be canceled was sent during the UPA regime in 2012,” she said adding as per the 2010 permission, the project was to be set up within 24 months. “But, nothing was done,” she said. PTI