Rahul Gandhi attacks govt for not paying tributes to farmers who died during protest

By PTI
NEW DELHI: Attacking the government for not paying tributes to farmers who died during their protest, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said his two-minute silence in the memory of the 300 men who sacrificed their lives is not acceptable to the BJP.

He used the hashtag ‘300DeathsAtProtest’ to highlight that 300 farmers have so far lost their lives in the farmers’ agitation.

“My 2 minute silence for the farmers who died during the agitation is not acceptable to the BJP. I will pay my tributes to the sacrifices of my farmers and labourers again and again. I am not afraid of those who fear my silence,” Gandhi said in a tweet in Hindi.

In another tweet, he again attacked the government over job losses and cited a report claiming that a large number of EPF accounts were shut during the pandemic.

He said that this was another achievement of the BJP government’s “eradicate employment campaign”.

“You lost your job and had to close down your EPF account. Another achievement of the Central Government’s ‘eradicate employment campaign’,” he said in a tweet in Hindi.

The unnamed news report claimed that a large number of people lost their jobs during the coronavirus pandemic and 71 lakh EPF accounts were closed in nine months.

Gandhi has been attacking the government over the handling of the farmers agitation and the pandemic, claiming many people lost their jobs during the lockdown.