On Thursday, December 19, the Hindi website of NDTV reported that the Ministry of Food Processing Industries had told the Lok Sabha that it did not have any plans to double the income of farmers. The report was based on the answer to unstarred question no. 1375, asked by MPs R. Parthipan and Joyce George. However, two days later, the answer available on the Lok Sabha Website stood altered.
The question was asked in the Lok Sabha on December 18. Here is the NDTV report that included a screenshot of the question and the answer given by the Miniser of State for Food Processing Industries, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti.
When this reporter was scanning the website on the morning of Friday, December 21, the first two words of the answer “जी, नहीं, महोदया” (No, Sir) had surprisingly vanished:
The Prime Minister has claimed a number of times that his government is working to ‘double the income of farmers’.
Update:
Commenting on the matter, Congress party’s national spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi, said that the alteration is not a surprise, “These alterations in the response are hardly surprising coming from a government that has been fraudulent to the farmers and working towards their welfare.”
She added that the prime minister’s promises to the farmers were mere jumlas, “Every single promise PM Modi have made to the farmers has been proved a jumla whether it is MSP, drought relief, debt relief or doubling their income. It goes on to show the insensitivity of a government that came on the back of the promises they made to the farmers but abandoned them immediately after coming to power. This is truly a suit boot Sarkar – of the corporates, for the corporates and by the corporates.”