Amarinder, Sukhbir trade charges over farm laws
Chandigarh: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal once again on Saturday attacked each other over the Centre's farm laws.
While the Punjab CM said the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) chief has "lost political narrative" over the issue, Badal alleged that the state bills passed against the farm laws aimed at sabotaging the farmers' stir.
According to a statement, the CM said the SAD chief seemed to have been jolted into desperation by the entire farm laws saga, which had completely exposed the double standards of the Akalis.
Reacting to Badal's statement, who accused the CM of colluding with the Centre to get the rail blockade by farmers lifted, Amarinder Singh said strange and senseless remarks showed the Akali leader had completely lost the political narrative, causing him to fumble for words and desperate to find a way out.
On the SAD chief's suggestion that the state government should have taken the SAD's advice before bringing the bills against the farm laws in the assembly, the CM said, It seems the NDA government at the Centre has taken the advice of their then allies, the Akalis, in the matter of the anti-farmer, anti-federal and anti-Constitutional farm laws.
That would explain why they messed it up so badly and took the unilateral decision to impose laws that are clearly designed to ruin farmers, he added.
Terming the SAD president's allegation of collusion between him and the BJP as "ludicrous", the CM said Badal appears to be in a state of mental despair and denial , which is leading him to make such nonsensical remarks.
Does Sukhbir really believe that I would lead my party to a political suicide with such an act, asked the CM.
The only rational explanation for such preposterous comments would be that the SAD leader had lost all sense of proportion out of sheer desperation at his and his party's political oblivion , which was no longer a distant possibility but a concrete fact, he added.
Meanwhile, Badal accused the CM of not taking his party's suggestion and said he instead chose to enter into a deal with the Centre and get wishy-washy bills passed with the sole intention of sabotaging the farmers' agitation.
Badal said the only solution was declaring the entire state as a principal market yard which would have negated the implementation of the central farm laws in Punjab.
He asked the CM if he had annulled the central agriculture-marketing laws and when the new bills passed in the Vidhan Sabha would come into being.
He asked him to tell farmers if the bills moved by him in the Vidhan Sabha had made the minimum support price a statutory right and guaranteed government purchase of all 24 crops.
You (Amarinder) know your bills will not be approved by the central government. You have not even annulled the amended APMC Act of 2017 which is a copy of the central agriculture acts.
We know you have no straight answers but still we give you 15 days to tell Punjabis why you defrauded them in this manner and why you are hand in glove with the Centre in destroying their future, he alleged.
The Punjab Assembly on Tuesday had adopted a resolution rejecting the Centre's new farm laws and passed four bills to counter the Centre's farm laws.
