Punjab farm Bills leave farmers at Modi’s mercy: SAD leader

Chandigarh, Oct 21 : A day after unanimously supporting the Congress government in the Punjab Assembly on three Bills to negate the central laws on agriculture, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) said on Wednesday that the state Bills have “thrown back Punjab farmers completely at Modi’s mercy”.
“All this is being done under a deep-rooted conspiracy between the state and the central governments to throw cold water on Punjab farmers,” senior Akali leader and former Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia claimed.
Majithia alleged that the Amarinder Singh government deliberately brought the Bills under the Concurrent List, in which Parliament has overriding powers over the state legislations.
“If the Chief Minister had brought the Bills under the State List, there would have been no need for presidential assent. But the Centre did not want it this way and he did not have the courage to say no to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His bravado is just for showoff,” he claimed.
The SAD leader told the media that the Punjab Bills and the manner in which they were brought and passed on Tuesday was “clearly an orchestrated and foxy move by the Modi-Captain (Amarinder Singh) duo to completely destroy the farmers’ cause by tossing the responsibility of purchase of crops up in the air between the state and the Centre”.
Majithia also condemned the clean chit given to Minister Sadhu Singh Dharmsot and demanded a “court-monitored” inquiry into the post-matric scholarship funds scam in Punjab, since it affected the future of the children from the poor and socially and economically vulnerable families.