Days after Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) legislators supported the Punjab Government’s farm bills to counter the Centre’s laws, Akali Dal core group on Thursday rejected the same.
Announcing the decision after the detailed meeting of the SAD core committee, party chief Sukhbir Badal declared that Akali Dal would “totally reject and block the implementation Modi’s anti-farmer Acts in Punjab, declare the entire state a Principal Market Area and repeal the hostile APMC 2017 enacted by Amarinder, when it forms a Government in Punjab”.
“Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh misled the House by reading a resolution that Assembly would reject central farm acts. In fact, the Punjab farm Bills indirectly accept the Central acts and have added amendments to those. We supported it in the House as we were not given copies of the Bills early enough to read and understand. We trusted the Chief Minister but he has betrayed the House and the farmers,” said Sukhbir, while expressing his views for the first time after Vidhan Sabha unanimously passed the three counter bills on Tuesday.
Notably, the Akali Dal MLAs even accompanied the Chief Minister and other party leaders to press on the Governor VPS Badnore to give his assent to the state bills at the earliest and forward it for the President’s nod.
“On all these issues, Capt Amarinder has played a fraud on the farmers. He first thrust the Bill before us just minutes ahead giving no time for studying the bills just as he had done with the river water bill in 2004 which has brought no result for Punjab,” said Sukhbir defending his party MLAs, adding that the Bills totally contradicted the resolution which was passed in the House.
He noted that the resolution had rejected Modi’s anti-farmer Acts and the also sought declaration of Punjab as principal market area. “It also sought rejection of 2017 APMC. But the bills, which Amarinder introduced, had none of these provisions. Thus, he defrauded the farmers and the House,” said Sukhbir.
Sukhbir said that the farmers demanded that the Government must ensure that their produce is procured at the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for all the 22 crops for which the Centre annually declares MSP. “We have been demanding that the assured marketing at MSP regime must not only continue but must also be expanded to cover all the 22 listed crops,” said Sukhbir adding that when the SAD forms a government in the state, “we will ensure that this demand is converted into an achievement”.
“We will do anything for the farmers because they are the backbone of Punjab’s economy. There is no Punjab minus the farmers,” he said.
SAD president blasted the Chief Minister for telling brazen lies about farmers in broad daylight, and that too on the sacred floor of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha. “Chief Minister claimed that he had already discussed everything about the issue with the farmers’ organizations before bringing those bills to the House. But the organizations later dismissed these Bills as “a tutte futte” (broken and meaningless),” he said.
Sukhbir alleged “a deep rooted and devious conspiracy between the BJP and Capt Amarinder Singh against the farmers”.
“What happened in Chandigarh yesterday was a part of a joint and evil Amarinder-BJP game-plan which is a part of a clever strategy to divert the farmers’ movement away from its nerve-center, Punjab. They want to weaken the intensity of this movement by uprooting it from its base in the country’s most agrarian state which suits both Amarinder and Modi…Punjab farmers are forced to fight away from their home ground,” Sukhbir said, adding that this is really dark and devious part of a wider conspiracy against the farmers.
Referring to the Chief Minister’s references to his willingness to resign if the Centre did not agree to the farmers’ demands, Sukhbir quipped, “Those who were sincere about resigning to fight for the farmers have already resigned while Captain Sahib is still merely boasting.”