Senior Congress leader Amarinder Singh today asked Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to hold talks with the agitating farmers and warned him against using “brute force” to resolve the agrarian crisis which could “vitiate” the peaceful atmosphere in the state.
“I am surprised. What stops Mr. Badal from talking to farmers directly,” he said in a statement released here.
The former chief minister alleged that the Badal government has been using brute force against other protestors like unemployed youth seeking jobs, which he warned would only add fuel to the fire in this case and that will be difficult to control.
Asserting that the farmers’ discontent was neither spontaneous nor without justified reasons, Mr. Singh said, it had been brewing for a long time and only the government was not taking note of it.
“I have been warning over a period of time not to take farmers’ discontent lightly and I am warning you again before it is too late,” he said, saying such situations and circumstances can provide fertile and conducive ground for disruptive forces to vitiate the peaceful atmosphere in the state.
“Either Mr. Badal is blissfully ignorant about the intensity of anger prevailing among the farming community which has all the potential and likelihood to spill over and spread across the state like a wild fire or he was hoping against hope for some miracle to happen and calm down protesting farmers,” he said.
He also pointed out, whether it was unusual and “unprecedented delay” in lifting of wheat, or the “denial” of payment to sugarcane growers or the “falling” prices of basmati and now damage to the cotton crop which is primarily due to the “negligence” of the government by supplying “spurious” pesticides, this government has consistently and continuously failed the farmers in all respects.
Hitting out at Mr. Badal for blaming the Congress for farmers’ issues, Lok Sabha MP from Amritsar reminded him that for about nine years now it the Shiromani Akali Dal- BJP government led by Mr. Badal was in power in Punjab.
“That is why I have been saying that Mr. Badal has grown too old to govern and remember since when he has been at the helm of affairs in the state and he can no longer blame others for his own failures,” he said. --PTI
