A day after Punjab and Haryana’s national awardee sportspersons announced to return their awards in protest against the “force” used against the peasants’ en route to Delhi, three former judges of the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Wednesday extended their support to the farmers’ ongoing agitation.
The nationwide farmers’ protest, with Punjab emerging as its epicenter, has apparently turned into a mass movement with singers, actors, politicians, religious leaders, bureaucrats, international political leaders, NRIs, sports personalities, and now the judiciary too coming in the open support of the agriculturists.
High Court’s former Acting Chief Justice Justice Mehtab Singh Gill, Justice Ranjit Singh and Justice Nawab Singh, in a joint statement, underscored that peaceful protest against a grievance was “constitutionally protected right of every citizen”.
Pointing that the treatment meted out to the farmers peacefully moving to Delhi by the Haryana police was “not only undemocratic, but brutal as well”, the Judges have appealed to the “good conscience of Government to hear the cries of farmers and consider their demands with open mind to find a solution to the grievances of the farmers as otherwise to protest or unrest in border state like Punjab may not augur well for peace in the country”.
The Judges noted that the indiscriminate use of water cannons in harsh cold winter, batons and other means would put any democratic government to shame. In return, the farmers could be seen offering water and food to the baton-yielding police, they added.
Raising questions over the “urgency” in passing the new legislations, the Judges stated that the Central Government first issued the ordinances “that too when the whole nation was in lockdown condition and fighting the serious pandemic engulfing the entire world. Was there any urgency or emergency to take the route through ordinances?”
“We see none such law could have waited for consideration in detail during the Parliament session. The government then bulldozed its way through to pass these laws in the Parliament,” said the Judges adding that the bills were passed in Rajya Sabha in a very questionable manner by voice vote against the demand of division.
Lashing out at the Centre for not showing the requisite concern when peaceful protest was confined to the states of Punjab and Haryana, the Judges asserted that the Government “now seems to have realized the gravity of the grievances when the agitating farmers have reached the outskirts of Delhi”, with the protest spreading over pan India in states like Rajasthan, Uttrakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.
“Apprehension of the farmers that these laws would benefit the corporates cannot be easily discounted. Government needs to realize the difficulty of the small and marginal farmers to deal with big corporates. Even the big and well do farmers cannot stand before the rich corporate,” they stated.
Urging the Government “to protect the poor rather than being seen with crorepatis”, the Judges pointed that the Corporates, may be a few, who would benefit but struggling farmers burdened with unending debts would lose their land and livelihood.