Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav has condemned the firing of tear gas shells by the Haryana Police on the farmers of Punjab heading towards national capital Delhi, on Tuesday.
“Using tear gas and placing nails and barricades at the Punjab-Haryana borders, everything is being done to prevent the farmers’ march. The Central government wants to suppress farmers’ voices. These are the same people from (Centre) who promised to double the income of farmers, crop rate, and MSP implementation,” said Akhilesh Yadav in a post on X.
Questioning the attempts of the Bharatiya Janata Party to reach out to the farmers by conferring Bharat Ratna on former prime minister Chaudhary Charan Singh and eminent agricultural scientist MS Swaminathan, the SP president said, “What kind of respect is shown to the farmers where iron nails are being laid on the highway to prevent the farmers from Punjab reaching national capital Delhi.”
“In fact the BJP is hiding its failures; the whole world is watching the repression let loose by the BJP government against the farmers. The BJP, by putting the barricades on the highway, has in fact dug the road to democracy and the iron nail laid on the highway has maligned the profile of India at global level,” the SP chief said.
Akhilesh Yadav said the repression by the government had fired the imagination of 140 crore people of the country and instead of “400 Paar” the BJP would face defeat by 400 seats.
“Farmers organisations have 3-4 main demands. Their biggest demand is that the Swaminathan formula be implemented. “MSP is not ‘Modi Selling Price’. MSP is ‘Minimum Support Price’,” SP spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary said.
The farmers’ march is the latest in a series of similar protests which began more than two years ago and comes months ahead of national general elections in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi will seek a rare third term, with farmers forming an influential voting bloc.