courtesy HT DEC 17

SC steps in: ‘Talks set to fail’

Women, including widows and relatives of farmers who killed themselves over debt, attend a demonstration against the new farm laws at Tikri border on Wednesday. HT PHOTO
Utkarsh Anand

letters@hindustantimes.com

New Delhi : The Supreme Court stepped in on Wednesday to try and end the impasse between farmers’ unions and the Centre over the contentious new laws to open up trade in agriculture, observing that the protest will soon become a national issue and that recent events suggest government negotiations with the unions were “bound to fail again.”

The organisation spearheading the protest said in its initial reaction that the court’s decision was moral victory for the farmers, but insisted that the laws should be repealed.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) SA Bobde will hold a joint hearing of the government and the farmers’ organisations on Thursday, indicating that the court will set up a committee of representatives of both sides to discuss and resolve the dispute.

“It doesn’t seem the negotiations between the government and farmers will work,” the court said.

The CJI-led bench is already seized of a clutch of petitions that have challenged the validity of the laws passed in September. These will also come up for hearing on Thursday. At least six factions of the BKU will be there at Thursday’s hearing. Permission was granted to implead major farm unions as respondents in the case, including the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU - Rajesh Tikait), BKU - Sidhupur (Jagjeet S. Dallewal), BKU - Rajewal (Balbeer Singh Rajewal), BKU - Lakhowal (Harinder Singh Lakhowal), and others.

The three laws triggered a massive protest by farmers, mainly from Punjab and Haryana, who have massed at the borders of Delhi since November 26. The laws allow agribusinesses to trade with minimal regulation, permit traders to stockpile large quantities of food commodities for economies of scale and lay down new contract farming rules.

Farmers say the new rules favour big corporations to whom they will lose business and gradually end the system of state-set minimum prices. Protesters decided to call off further negotiations on December 8, after a meeting with home minister Amit Shah, claiming a stalemate.The government has offered to amend the laws substantially; the farmers’ unions want nothing short of their repeal.

Farm unions urge Centre to stop ‘parallel negotiations’