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Indira Gandhi set up the Gkp fertiliser factory that BJP closed in 2002: Congress

By, Lucknow
Dec 07, 2021 11:58 PM IST

It was the Congress government that had built the Gorakhpur fertiliser factory, but BJP government scrambled to take credit for it , says UP Congress spokesperson

The Uttar Pradesh (UP) Congress claimed the Bhartiya Janata Party’s (BJP) propaganda of having inaugurated the Gorakhpur Fertiliser Factory was fake.

Gkp fertiliser factory (HT)
Gkp fertiliser factory (HT)

Anshu Awasthi, a UP Congress spokesman, said: “It was the Congress government that had built the Gorakhpur fertiliser factory, but BJP government scrambled to take credit for it and is now spreading false propaganda through advertisements even as the farmers were queuing up for fertilisers and were being run over by vehicles (referring to the Lakhimpur Kheri incident of September 3). In 2022 UP Assembly polls people will reduce BJP to below 50 seats”.

“This factory, was commissioned by the then Prime minister Indira Gandhi on April 30, 1968. It was one of the five units of the Fertilisers Corporation of India (FCI) and had employed lakhs of people directly and indirectly. But the anti-people and anti-farmer government of BJP at the centre announced the closure of the factory on July 18, 2002. Not just this, the BJP government at the centre then had closed five other fertilisers factories--in Bilki Sindri (Jharkhand), Thalchar (Odisha), Ramagundam (Telangana), Korba (Chattisgarh) and also the Hindustan Fertiliser Corporation Limited factories in Durgapur, Haldia, and Barauni--all the factories established in Congress regimes”, said Awasthi.

Awasthi claimed in 2008, the Congress-led UPA-1 government had initiated the process to restart all those fertiliser factories and had even waived off loans and interest of 10,644 crore on them.

Fact file

The fertilizer factory of Gorakhpur was started on 20 April 1968 by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. It operated till 1990 until an accident halted the factory’s functioning. On 10 June 1990, there was a sudden leak of ammonia gas in the factory. An engineer was killed in this incident. For decades there had been demands for reopening the factory. In 2002 VRS (voluntary retirement scheme) given to nearly 2400 permanent employees

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