With the winter session of Parliament cancelled , two Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MPs raised slogans against the three farm laws, in a failed attempt to draw attention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had come to pay tributes to former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee on the occasion of his 96th birth anniversary, in the Central Hall of Parliament on Friday.
AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh tweeted a video of himself and his Lok Sabha colleague Bhagwant Mann holding placards and raising slogans while PM Modi walked out without acknowledging the two. In the video, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad and Congress’s Lok Sabha floor leader are also seen.
Mr. Singh and Mr. Mann held posters demanding legal provision for Minimum Support Price (MSP) and shouted slogans demanding repeal of the farm laws and asking the government to pay attention to protesting farmers at the Singhu border.
“The Parliament session is not being called. The winter session is cancelled. How do we raise our voice? How do we flag the farmers’ concerns? Thirty-two farmers so far have lost their lives in this agitation but the government is completely immune to their travails,” Mr. Singh told The Hindu . When pointed out that the protest failed to draw PM Modi’s attention, Mr. Singh added, “He doesn’t bother sparing a moment to look at the concerns of the nation, why would he bother about us,” he said.
Mr. Singh said both Mr. Mann and him raised slogans only after they had paid their tributes to Vajpayee and did not in any way disrupt the solemn proceedings. They raised slogans only towards the end of the ceremony.
Mr. Mann, the MP from Punjab’s Sangrur, tweeted in Hindi, “Pro-farmer slogans echoed in the Central Hall to open the closed eyes and ears of the Modi government (sic).”
