COURTESY HT SEPT 20

Cong hits out at NDA over farm bills

Members of farmers' organisations on their way to a protest in Patiala on Saturday. BHARAT BHUSHAN/HT

HT Correspondent

letters@hindustantimes.com

New Delhi : A day before the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is expected to push three contentious legislations on farm reforms in the Rajya Sabha, the Congress sought to mount pressure on the ruling side, signalling an imminent confrontation when the bills come for passage in the Upper House on Sunday.

Senior Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram compared the farm reforms proposed by his party and the NDA’s version. “While our promise is clear, the Modi government has surrendered to the corporates and traders,” he said in a statement on Saturday.

“Every political party has to take a stand — is it with the farmers or is it with the BJP threatening the livelihood of farmers,” he said.

His comments came a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took on critics of the farm-liberalisation plan, accusing detractors of spreading “misinformation and lies” while reassuring farmers the reforms were in their best interests.

Modi called the reforms a “protective shield” around farmers and took a veiled but sharp attack on the Congress. “These people who would make big promises to farmers during election time, would do it in writing, and in their manifestoes, forget these promises after elections,” Modi said.

The Congress’s 2019 manifesto promised to liberalise agricultural markets.

Chidambaram alleged that the government and the Centre’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) “deliberately and maliciously distorted the Congress manifesto”. “Little knowledge is dangerous and little reading is even more dangerous”, he said, and added that the BJP was caught in a web of its own creation.

The Congress, meanwhile, has issued a three-line whip to its members, asking them to be present in the Rajya Sabha during the debate and voting on the farm bills on Sunday. The party has also called a meeting of its general secretaries and in-charge of states on Monday to discuss the course of action on the bills and its proposed nationwide agitation.

The BJP, which does not have a majority in the Upper House, too, has asked all its members to be present in the House. The Lok Sabha, where the BJP and its allies enjoy a brute majority, has passed all three bills.

“The bills assume perversely that the farmer and the private purchaser have equal bargaining power. They do not. The small farmer will be at the mercy of the private purchaser,” Chidambaram said.