Mahayuti govt failed on farm loan waiver, employment: Congress

Maharashtra Congress president Harshwardhan Sapkal on Thursday unleashed a scathing, wide-ranging critique of the Mahayuti government, accusing it of squandering its first year in power and reneging on promises made to the people.

As the ruling alliance of the BJP, NCP and Shiv Sena approaches its anniversary on Friday, Sapkal painted a picture of a regime adrift, marred by broken commitments, mounting corruption and a troubling erosion of public trust.

Addressing reporters, Sapkal charged that the government had failed to honour assurances on women’s welfare schemes, farm loan waivers, and employment for the state’s youth. Instead, he claimed, Maharashtra had witnessed a rise in crime networks, creeping corruption, and a neglect of core issues affecting daily life.

“This has been a year of financial and intellectual bankruptcy,” he declared, calling it a period marked not by governance but by regression.

The Congress leader reserved especially strong words for the conduct of the recent local body polls — the first in a decade — alleging grave irregularities that, he said, strike at the heart of democratic fairness. He cited an incident in Salekasa Nagar Panchayat, where seals of 17 EVMs were allegedly opened after voting hours and ballots cast anew, with no FIR registered. Such actions, he warned, cast a long shadow over the integrity of the electoral process.

Sapkal said the Congress has consistently flagged issues of bogus voting, faulty rolls and unaddressed electoral reforms, and will stage a rally in New Delhi on 14 December to protest “vote manipulation”.

Turning to agrarian distress, Sapkal accused the government of abandoning farmers devastated by heavy rains between May and October. Despite vast crop damage, he said, clarity was missing on the much-publicised Rs 33,000-crore relief package, and the state had not sent the required proposal to the Centre — a failure he described as evidence of “no intention to help farmers”.

He also sharpened his attack on the handling of the Pune land-sale case, arguing that the arrest of Shital Tejwani showed she was being made a scapegoat while no action was taken against Parth Pawar, son of deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar.

Sapkal additionally criticised the Nashik civic body’s plan to fell more than 1,700 trees in Tapovan ahead of the next Kumbh Mela, calling the decision unnecessary and insensitive to the area’s religious and ecological importance.

With a year gone and grievances mounting, Sapkal suggested that the Mahayuti government stood increasingly exposed — not as a harbinger of stability, but as a coalition struggling to keep its promises and losing the confidence of the very people it vowed to serve.

With PTI inputs