With protesting farmers’ groups taking to the streets to block roads and take out rallies and marches today as part of their nationwide agitation against the Narendra Modi government’s three controversial farm sector Bills passed by Parliament earlier this week,Punjab chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh expressed the hope that the agony of the agitating farmers will reach the central government.
He also hoped that the Centre will “gracefully back off from destroying the farm sector with such ruthless disregard for the farming community”. He has maintained that the Centre’s three contentious legislations were“anti-farmers” that will “destroy the farming community”.
“The BJP-led Union government had, with its ill-conceived and unconstitutional farm laws, pushed the farmers to the brink, forcing them to come out on the roads and endanger their lives amid the Covid pandemic,” said the Punjab CM, expressing grave concern over the plight of the farmers and others associated with the agriculture sector, who form the lifeline of Punjab’s economy.
“Maybe the distressing visuals of tens of hundreds of farmers out on the roads at hundreds of locations in Punjab, and in several other states, will touch the hearts of the Centre’s leadership,” the CM hoped, adding that “Perhaps the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will now realise its folly”.
Iterating his commitment to fight these “draconian” farm laws till his last breath, Capt Amarinder also urged the President not to give his assent to the Bills, which were crafted, he alleged, “to destroy not just the economy of Punjab and the food security of the nation but also the lives of lakhs of farmers and their families, as well as those dependent on the agricultural food chain for their livelihood”.
The Bills, if implemented, will have “devastating effects” for the border state of Punjab, as well as for the entire nation, Capt Amarinder warned, charging the Modi dispensation with ignoring farmers’ concerns to promote the interests of its capitalist cronies.
He also lashed out at the Akalis for their public posturing on the Bills, which, he claimed, “even the farmers had dismissed as crocodile tears”.
Reacting to the attacks by SAD president Sukhbir Badal and SAD leader Harsimrat Badal on him, Capt Amarinder dubbed it as a “blatant tactic to divert attention from their own failures to protect the farmers’ interests and their shameful decision to stay on in the central government, after actively supporting and defending the farm Ordinances (earlier).“
The CM charged that the Akalis’ “double standards” had been “totally exposed“ by the point that they continued to be a part of the “antifarmer ruling coalition at the Centre” and had, till date, refused to even come out with any public criticism of the Union government.
“This drama of Harsimrat resigning from the Union Cabinet is not enough to convince the farmers of the sincerity of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD),” he added.