Oppn support irresponsible: BJP

Alleges Opposition parties are trying to save their existence through farmers protests

Insisting that a section of farmers have fallen in the grip of a few vested interests, the BJP on Monday said Opposition parties are supporting the protests by some farmers’ groups against the recently passed legislations “to save their existence after being repeatedly rejected by people in different elections across the country.”

The ruling party said Opposition parties jumping in to support the protest and the ‘Bharat Bandh’ called by some farmers unions are “irresponsibly and unwarrantedly trying to give protests a wrong direction in order to serve their political interests.”

The BJP asserted that the reforms will benefit the small and marginal farmers, which are 86 per cent of the total farming community.

Pointing out that the earlier Congress-led UPA government, the then agriculture minister and NCP supremo Sharad Pawar and the Congress’ Rahul Gandhi had supported reforms in the APMC Act, senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said whether it is CAA or Shaheen Bagh or any reform, Opposition opposes the Modi government for the sake of opposition forgetting their own work on the same issue in the past, exposing their “double standards.”

Reading from the Congress’ 2019 Lok Sabha poll manifesto and citing a meeting of Congress chief ministers called by Gandhi in 2013, a policy document of the erstwhile Planning Commission and letters by the then agriculture minister Pawar to chief ministers of all states, Prasad said all had suggested and supported amendment in the APMC

Act, which the Modi government has done. On the issue of contract farming, Prasad pointed that during the UPA rule, states like Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chattisgarh, Odisha, Haryana, Goa, Maharashtra, MP, Mizoram had implemented model contract farming.

“I will reiterate again that farmers’ land can neither be leased nor sold nor mortgaged in contract farming as it is not the land but produce that will be the collateral,” he asserted. On allegations that the government wants to shut down mandis, he said since the implementation of reforms laws, the minimum support price of six Kharif and Rabi crops have been hiked and by the end of November, 318 lakh tonnes of rice worth `60,000 crore has been procured out of which 202 lakh tonnes of paddy has been procured from Punjab.