Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday dubbed the loan waivers announced by the Congress governments as "political stunts" and asserted that a majority of farmers do not benefit from these "misleading" announcements as only a few of them take loans from banks, reported ANI.

In an interview to ANI, he said the solution to the farmers' problems is to empower them and his government is committed to this. "These are political stunts," Modi asserted. He recently described the loan waivers announced by the Congress governments in states like Madhya Pradesh as "lollipops".

Watch the full interview of Narendra Modi here

Asked why he described the announcements as "lollipops", the Prime Minister said: "To say a lie and mislead, that is what I called lollipop. Like saying that we have waived all farm loans. The truth is that nothing like that has happened... They should not mislead... And particularly a responsible political party should never do it."

Explaining further, he said to ANI that there is a very small segment of farmers who take loans from banks while a majority of them take loans from money lenders. "(So) when governments make such announcements (of loan waivers), those farmers ( who take loans from money lenders) do not become beneficiaries of the waivers. The farmers who are dying are out of the purview of such schemes," Modi elaborated.

Responding to criticism that his government has been insensitive to the farmers' woes, he said, "If loan waiver helps, it should be definitely done. But it has been done by earlier governments also. Since (former Deputy Prime Minister) Devi Lal's time (in 1989-1991), loan waiver was done."

First Published:Jan 1, 2019 6:54 PM IST