Chandigarh: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday asked Sukhbir Singh Badal to refrain from commenting on the new farm laws till the SAD chief answers why Harsimrat Kaur Badal “didn’t oppose” the ordinances when they were approved in the Union Cabinet. Amarinder Singh also alleged that Sukhbir Singh Badal was trying to hijack the farmers’ agitation to push his own party’s agenda.
The chief minister asked him to reply to three questions, “Why did Harsimrat Kaur Badal not oppose the farm ordinances when they were first approved by the Union Cabinet, of which she was then a member? “Why did Sukhbir not support the state government at the all-party meeting he (Amarinder) had convened to evolve a consensus against the blatantly anti-farmer legislations? Why did the Akalis boycott the Punjab Vidhan Sabha session in which the other parties (barring BJP) had voted in favour of the resolution on the agricultural laws?. Amarinder Singh said he had been asking these questions to Sukhbir Singh Badal and Harsimrat Badal for the past several weeks but the Akali leaders had been persistently ignoring it. The chief minister said, “It was clear the duo had no justification for their actions, which had brought the situation to such a pass, where the very survival of the farmers was at stake.” Harsimrat Kaur Badal had recently resigned from the Union Cabinet and her party had snapped ties with BJP-led NDA on the issue of the farm bills.
Reacting to Sukhbir Singh Badal’s “request to the prime minister to talk to farmer organisations and listen to the voice of the people, the chief minister asked why he did not remind the PM of his responsibility towards farmers all those years he was colluding with the BJP to ruin the farming community. “And what about your responsibility? Or are you admitting that you never had any sense of duty towards the people of Punjab, especially the farmers, Singh asked. On Sukhbir Singh Badal’s comments about forming a national pro-farmer front with like-minded parties, the chief minister quipped that the SAD had ostensibly already quit the coalition of “like-minded parties”.
“Had he any interest in the welfare of the farmers, he would have come supported the Punjab government’s battle against the agricultural laws of the Union government, he said.
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