Terming the new farm laws enacted by the Narendra Modi government “pro-big business”, former Rajya Sabha MP and Himachal Pradesh Congress in-charge Rajeev Shukla on Wednesday sought support for farmers’ protests from the people of the state.

Addressing Congress’ Jan Aakrosh Rally in Shimla, Shukla said injustice was being meted out to the farming community under the new farm laws as these were formulated to benefit big businessmen only.

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“Farmers and horticulturalists are suffering due to wrong policies of the PM Modi government and it is the reason that farmers are sitting on protests on Delhi borders for more than 100 days now,” he said.

He also took a jibe at PM Modi’s ‘Desh nahi bikane dunga’ slogan and said now the Central government was trying to sell Public Sector Units that were created in the last 70 years with public’s money. “Former Prime Ministers like Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh created public sector companies in the last 70 years with their vision. But the present government seemed to be more interested in selling all these national assets rather than creating new ones,” he said.

Shukla said the BJP government at the Centre had only made false promises of bringing good days (“acche din” and bringing inflation under control) to the people of the country but failed to deliver on these. In fact, PM Modi during Lok Sabha polls had promised to provide petrol and diesel per litre at Rs 40 and Rs 38 respectively but now the prices of these commodities had crossed Rs 100 in the country, he said.

Shukla further said that the BJP-led Himachal government’s “mismanagement” during the Covid pandemic has resulted in citizens running from pillar to post to seek relief.

There were several allegations of scams in procurement of PPE kits, sanitizer and it seemed that the Jai Ram Thakur government used Covid period to make money, he alleged. Further, the state government was protecting persons who were involved in scams while opposition leaders were being implicated in false case and misinformation was being spread in public domain against the Congress to retain power in the state.

“It seems that days of the BJP government at Shimla and Delhi are over now and the people of the state and country will vote them out in the coming elections,” Shukla added.

State Congress Chief Kuldeep Singh Rathore, Leader of Opposition Mukesh Agnihotri, former Congress chief Sukhvinder Sukhu, state party organization secretary Rajnish Kimta, MLAs and party office bearers were present on the occasion among others.