The BJP on Monday accused the Opposition parties, particularly the Congress, of “shameless double standards” for supporting the farmers’ protest, betraying jitters before the countrywide bandh on Tuesday.
The ruling party fielded law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in Delhi and chief ministers and former chief ministers in the states to launch an all-out attack on the Opposition ahead of the strike.
Prasad claimed the Manmohan Singh government had been pushing the same reforms when it was in power. “This press conference is designed to expose the shameless double standards of the non-BJP Opposition parties as far as reforms in the farming sector is concerned,” he said.
“In its 10 years, the Manmohan Singh government and their state governments have been doing the same things,” Prasad said, adding that contract farming had started in many Congress-ruled states.
The BJP has been levelling these charges ever since the protests against the new farm laws began. What, however, was important in the repetition on Monday was the timing, a day ahead of the countrywide strike call issued by the farmers’ unions and backed by the Opposition.
The minister said while he appreciates the farmers for not allowing political parties to join their protest, the way the parties were jumping on the bandwagon showed they were “opposing the Narendra Modi government for opposition, forgetting their work in the past”.
Prasad quoted from the 2019 poll manifesto of the Congress and said the party had promised to “repeal the APMC (Agricultural Produce Market Committee) Act” and make “inter-state trade free of restrictions”.
The BJP has levelled this accusation in the past too and the Congress has responded that their idea of reforms was very different. On Monday, too, the Congress iterated that it was not against reforms but was against allowing corporate takeover of the farm sector, which it accused the new farm laws of doing.
Prasad sidestepped the details in the new laws and alleged that the Opposition was using the farmers’ protest as another issue to target Modi.
The minister also attacked NCP chief Sharad Pawar, saying that as agriculture minister in the UPA government he had written letters to all chief ministers and pitched for “private sector participation”.
“...Private sector participation is essential for which an appropriate policy and regulatory mechanism environment needs to be in place,” Prasad quoted from a 2010 letter purportedly written by Pawar to then Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit.
He referred to a media interview and said Pawar in 2005, in response to a question, had said that the “APMC Act will end in six months” and claimed he had even talked about stopping financial support to states if they didn’t go for reforms.
A farmer holds a poster at the Singhu border. (PTI)
The Left parties were supporting the UPA government and didn’t oppose these moves, Prasad said.
But although Prasad accused Pawar of opposing the farm laws, the NCP boss has only opposed the manner in which they were pushed and has urged the government to take the protest seriously.
Since the farmers’ protest began, the BJP has been trying to malign and discredit it, branding the protesters “Khalistanis”. On Monday, however, Prasad did not comment on the farmers.
Badal writes to Modi
A day before the bandh, longtime BJP ally Parkash Singh Badal who had walked out of the National Democratic Alliance over the farm laws wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to seek his “personal intervention” to resolve the farmers’ crisis.
The Shiromani Akali Dal patriarch invoked the days of the Emergency and “dictatorship” to underline the need for amicable solution through consensus with all stakeholders.
The first step should be withdrawal of the three farm laws, followed by making minimum support price a “statutory legal right”, as recommended by the Swaminathan Commision, he wrote.
“In the end, I wish to re-emphasise the need for a liberal, secular democratic approach to solve all the problems facing the country today, including this one,” Badal wrote.
