A day after Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh rejected the one week ultimatum given by the farmers’ unions for holding a special Assembly session to negate the Centre’s contentious farm laws, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal today charged that Capt Amarinder was playing a “fixed match by purposely delaying bringing in legislation to negate the agriculture sector laws”.

Stating that there was more to the CM’s refusal on the matter, the SAD president said, “Amarinder Singh is again asking for time to bring the legislation despite the fact that the SAD was the first to make this demand more than ten days back. We had asked the CM to call a special session and bring in legislation making the entire State a single market yard. The farm organizations are also making a similar demand.”

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Badal said in keeping with the “fixed match“ the CM was playing on the issue, the latter outright rejected the SAD’s suggestion about a week ago.

He said Capt Amarinder subsequently announced that he would call a special session on the matter. “Now when the farmer organisations have tried to pin him down he is again trying to escape by rejecting the ample time of one week given to him by the farm organisations. All this points to the fact that the CM is simply playing out a fixed match and has no interest whatsoever in ensuring the rights of farmers of the state are protected at the earliest,” he charged.

Badal also lambasted the CM for adopting an “arrogant attitude” vis-a-vis the farmers of the state and refusing to either listen to their grievances or taking any step to redress them.

“The farmers and farm labourers will never forget that you continued to be more loyal to the Gandhi family than to the farmers of the State by refusing to annul the amended APMC Act of 2017 which provides for all the provisions contained in the farm laws including private mandis, e-trading and contract farming,” the SAD leader said.

“We will compel this anti farmer government to not only repeal its amended Agriculture Produce Markets Committee (APMC) Act 2017 but also bring in legislation to make the entire state one ‘Mandi” (market) so that the three agriculture marketing laws are no longer applicable in Punjab,” Badal added.

Last month, the SAD, the BJP’s oldest ally, quit the Narendra Modi government and subsequently the BJP-led NDA in protest against the Modi government’s controversial farm legislations.

Amid the continuing war of words between the ruling Congress and the Opposition SAD in Punjab over the Modi government’s agriculture laws, Capt Amarinder and Sukhbir-led Akali camp have continued to trade fireworks, even though both camps have been up in arms against these “anti-farmers and antiPunjab” legislations.

Slamming the Akalis for “actively supporting” the Union government in “selling off the farmers’ rights to the monopolistic corporate houses through the unconstitutional and undemocratic farm legislations”, Capt Amarinder had earlier said that the SAD had “completely lost any political credibility or standing after their antics on the new laws”.