Telangana CM urges farmers to resume their fight

In an attempt to position himself as a national leader and build a consensus for an anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) platform, Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, attended an event here on Sunday, along with his Punjab and Delhi counterparts, Bhagwant Mann and Arvind Kejriwal, to honour the victims of the recent farm law agitation and soldiers who died fighting in the Galwan Valley.

Mr. Rao, who has started touring various States to get the support of all non-BJP parties for a legal backing for the minimum support price, urged farmers to resume their agitation for all the demands, including MSP on all crops with a constitutional guarantee.

Mr. Rao attended the event to pay tributes to the farmers from Punjab and Haryana, who lost their lives during the year-long farmers’ agitation’ against the Centre’s farm laws (now repealed) and the fallen soldiers in Galwan Valley. Mr. Rao was in Chandigarh as part of his week-long tour to attend national-level political and social programmes.

“Now this struggle should not be restricted to the States of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. All the farmers from other States should proactively come forward for getting their genuine demands accepted from the Centre,” he said.

He said that such a struggle was necessary to ensure the welfare and prosperity of our farmers across the country. Mr. Rao opposed the Centre’s move to install electricity meters in the farm sector saying, “The Telangana government will not go for this in the larger interest of farming community. We have already passed a resolution in the Assembly.”

“Today’s function organised to honour the families of valiant soldiers and farmers reflects our deep reverence and commitment for the adage ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’,” he said.

Mr. Rao was here to hand over ₹3 lakh each to families of farmers and ₹10 lakh each to fallen soldiers of Galwan Valley, on behalf of the people of Telangana.

Taking a dig at the BJP government at the Centre, Mr. Kejriwal said that during the farmers’ agitation, there had been tremendous pressure on his government from the Centre to stall the agitation by converting all stadia in Delhi into open jails so as to put the farmers in jails. He said that since he knew the significance of any mass movement as was also at the forefront of the ‘Anna Andolan’, he didn’t buckle under Central government’s pressure,” he said