WON’T TAKE PART IN COMMITTEE MEETS: FARMER UNIONS TO COURT

NEW DELHI : Protesting farmer unions on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that they would not participate in meetings and deliberations to be held by the court-appointed committee to address their grievances and maintained they wanted the new farm laws repealed.

The top court told the lawyers appearing for farmers unions that all it wanted is resolution of the impasse and peace, while clarifying committee has not been given adjudicatory powers and it will only submit its report to it.

A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian was informed by senior advocate Dushyant Dave and advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the farmer unions, who have been made party in the case that they had firm belief that farm laws are against their interest.

Bhushan said, “We have instructions from our clients to tell that they have taken a stand that they will not participate in the meetings and deliberations to be held by the committee”.

During the hearing conducted through video conferencing on a plea of ‘Kisan Mahapanchayat’ a farmers body from Rajasthan, the bench said, “You don’t want to appear before the committee is understandable, but casting aspersions on someone because he expressed his view is not done. You don’t need to brand anybody like this.” It expressed strong displeasure over the aspersions cast by some farmers’ unions on members of the committee.

The bench told Bhushan to see what solution can be found and all it wants is resolution of the impasse and peace and just saying that they will not appear before the committee, will not help and he has to counsel his clients to bring peace. PTI