By PTI
SIDDARTH NAGAR: An MLA of the Apna Dal (S), an ally of the ruling BJP in Uttar Pradesh, came out in support of the farmers agitating against three new agriculture laws of the Centre on Wednesday and questioned why the government was adamant on implementing the legislations.
“It seems that the government has no problem with people and farmers getting angry. It looks like the aim is not to make a handful of industrialists unhappy,” Apna Dal (S) MLA Amar Singh Chaudhary told reporters here.
Asking why industrialists Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani got big godowns constructed in different states about a year ago, he said the people who voted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and again in the 2019 general election, with the farmers also extending support to the saffron party on the promise that their income will be doubled, are unhappy over the contentious farm laws.
Stressing that farmers have doubts because big industrial houses have constructed godowns from Panipat in Haryana to Gujarat and they fear that their land would be taken and they will be reduced to bonded labourers, Chaudhary said the government is not doing anything to clear these doubts.
The government and the BJP are not trustworthy, BKU president Naresh Tikait alleged on Wednesday, as he hit out at the Centre over the contentious agriculture laws.
Tikait made the remark as he participated in a monthly meeting of his farmers’ union at Ghazipur on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border.
Addressing Bharatiya Kisan Union supporters, who have been camping at Ghazipur for nearly four months now, Tikait said: “This movement will continue for long, make it a part of your routine.”
“The government and the BJP are not trustworthy,” the farmer leader said, according to a statement issued by BKU’s national media incharge Dharmendra Malik.
“More people like (Meghalaya Governor) Satyapal Malik will come forward. The farmers respect their truth. BJP MPs are now feeling suffocated,” Tikait said.
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Malik had on Sunday sided with farmers protesting the Centre’s new agriculture laws and urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah not to offend the community.
Speaking at an event in his home district of Baghpat in western Uttar Pradesh, Malik had said if the Centre gave legal guarantee of the minimum support price (MSP) for crops, farmers would relent.
“None of the laws are in favour of farmers. The country in which farmers and soldiers are not satisfied, that country cannot move ahead. That country cannot be saved. Hence, the Army and farmers should be kept satisfied,” Malik had said.
Hundreds of farmers are camping at Delh’s borders at Ghazipur, Singhu and Tikri since November with a demand that the Centre repeal the three contentious farm laws and make a new one that would ensure legal guarantee on the MSP.
The government, however, has held that the laws were pro-farmer.
RLD vice president Jayant Chaudhary on Wednesday said the government has continued with its “adamant” attitude despite agitation against the three farm laws.
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Addressing a Kisan Mahapanchayat at the Kisan Bhawan at Bahedi, 50 km from Bareilly district headquarters, Chaudhary said, “The governments in the state and at the Centre have merely become a puppet in the hands of capitalists”.
“Farmers have been agitating for a long time for withdrawal of the three agricultural bills, but the central government is adamant. The central government is working only to benefit industrialists. They want to enslave the farmers by giving their land to industrialists,” the RLD leader said.
On the West Bengal Assembly elections, Chaudhary said Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has “single-handedly shaken the entire BJP”.
“She has also suffered injuries in her legs and has become an injured lioness who will become the chief minister again after the Assembly elections in Bengal.”
