A day after Congress-ruled Punjab became the first State to pass it’s own laws to negate the Central laws on the agricultural sector, former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Wednesday argued that the law passed by the Assembly should be viewed as an ‘alternative’ model to market produce.
In a series of tweets, Mr. Chidambaram argued that “One Country One system will wreck federalism”.
“Modi government has adopted a model of agricultural produce marketing, Punjab government has adopted another model. Why can’t there be two models of marketing farm produce in a large country like India? Article 254 of the Constitution gives that right to every State,” he said.
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The former Union Minister argued that in a federal system “there is space for as many models as there are States”.
“One Country One System will lead to mediocrity and wreck federalism. Let the people of each State decide which model they want. That is a decision that the people must make, not the Governor or the President.”
The Congress and the BJP are engaged in a bitter battle over the recently enacted farm laws that propose to drastically change the way agricultural commodities are marketed in India.
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While the Congress alleges that the new laws would disempower farmers by allowing large corporates to enter the agri sector and put an end to the system of offering minimum support price (MSP), the BJP, on the contrary, has argued that the new laws will remove restrictions and will enable farmers to market their produce freely without compromising on the MSP.