SC panel meets farm leaders
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court-appointed panel on the new agri laws on Thursday began its consultation process and interacted with 10 farmer organisations from eight states, including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.
The apex court had on January 11 stayed the implementation of the three laws, against which farmers are protesting at Delhi borders since nearly two months bracing the harsh winter, till further orders and appointed a four-member panel to resolve the impasse.
Currently, there are three members in the panel as the fourth, Bhartiya Kisan Union president Bhupinder Singh Mann, has recused himself from the committee. The panel, in a statement, said that the interaction was held through video conference with various farmer unions and associations on Thursday.
Ten farmer organisations from Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharasthra, Odisha, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh participated in discussions with committee members, it said. “The farmers’ unions participated in the discussion and gave their frank opinion including suggestions to improve the implementation of Acts,” the statement said.
The participating farmer bodies were asked to give their views on the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020.
President of Maharasthrabased Shetkari Sanghatana Anil Ghanwat and agri-economists Ashok Gulati and Pramod Kumar Joshi are the three members of the panel.
On Wednesday, the Union government proposed to suspend three contentious agricultural laws for one-and-a-half years, taking a step back to try and assuage farmers with its most far-reaching proposal yet to end months-long protests against the legislation passed in Parliament in September.
In the 10th round of negotiations with a 41-member delegation representing protesting farm unions on Wednesday, the government said it will move an affidavit before the Supreme Court to put the laws in abeyance till a solution to the farmers’ demands is found. Leaders of major farm unions who took part in the talks said they will discuss the government’s offer on Thursday, and make their stand clear when the next round of talks takes place on January 22.
Till the time this newspaper went to print, the meeting among farmers did not take place.
Farm unions have not rejected the government’s offer outright, unlike in the past, and said it was a proposal worth discussing, which offers a glimmer of hope to end the standoff.
The government has pushed a set of agricultural laws to ease restrictions in farm trade, allow traders to stockpile large quantities of food stocks for future sales and lay down a national framework for contract farming based on written agreements.
Farmers staging a massive protest on several of Delhi’s border points say the laws will erode their bargaining power and leave them at the mercy of big corporations.