Former Congress president and MP Rahul Gandhi on Sunday hit out at the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre, accusing it of playing into the hands of “big corporates” to compromise the interests of the farming community.
Mr. Gandhi, who kick-started Congress party’s three-day ‘tractor rally’ — Kheti Bachao Yatra — against the three recent farm sector legislations, said the Congress would repeal the legislations as soon as it was back in power.
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“The Congress is firmly standing with farmers and I guarantee you that the day when Congress comes to power we will scrap these three black laws and consign them to the dustbin,” said Mr. Gandhi, before taking off on the tractor rally through Moga and Ludhiana districts.
“The Central government is a puppet government, whose strings are in the hands of the Adanis and the Ambanis. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been misleading the nation for the past six years to serve the interests of 2-3 large corporate houses,” said Mr. Gandhi, citing examples of demonetisation, GST and the debt and tax waiver of big industrialists amid the pandemic, while not giving any monetary aid to the poor and the farmers.
“We are with you (farmers) in this fight for their survival and livelihood, which the Modi government is trying to destroy with these draconian laws. Together we will change these laws,” he said.
Mr. Gandhi questioned the need to push agriculture sector laws urgently without any discussion in Parliament even as the country was fighting COVID-19.
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“If the farmers are happy with these legislations, as the Centre government is claiming, then why are they agitating in Punjab and the rest of the country, ” he asked.
The Congress leader added that the new laws were aimed at eventually dismantling the Minimum Support Price (MSP) structure and government procurement system, which he said, would break the backbone of the farmers, just as the British had done to seize control of India.
“The central government was also trying to break the farmers’ backbone to hand over the entire farming system to their industrialist. We, however, will not let it happen. The Congress will stand with the farmers and not move back an inch,” he said.
