NEW DELHI: Upping the ante against the BJP-led central government ahead of the panchayat elections in Uttar Pradesh, which his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is contesting for the first time, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal termed the three new agriculture laws as “death warrant for farmers”.
Addressing a Kisan Mahapanchayat in Meerut, the CM said it had been more than three months since farmers had been protesting on the Delhi borders without caring for their lives and health because the Centre wants to hand over their land to its “capitalist friends”.
“The farmers who own the land today will become labourers on their own lands after the implementation of these laws,” he claimed. More than 250 farmers have died but the Centre has done nothing, he added. Kejriwal also accused the Centre and the BJP of orchestrating the Red Fort violence on Republic Day. “These are the people who planned the whole violence at Red Fort.
They themselves let the farmers in Delhi, and those who raised the flags were their volunteers. Our farmers will give their life, but can never be antinational. The BJP government is filing sedition cases against our farmers, something that even the Britishers did not do. They call our farmers terrorists,” he said. “Our farmers have two sons: one who is fighting on India’s borders, and the other who is fighting on Delhi’s borders.
Imagine the pain that a soldier goes through when he sees his brother and father being called terrorists by the government,” he added. Kejriwal alleged that the Centre “adopted all tactics”, even threatened his government, to convert nine Delhi stadia into jails to lodge the protesting farmers, but the AAP and the Delhi government stood firmly with the protesters. Kejriwal alleged that UP’s sugarcane farmers had not been getting their dues for up to two years. “Yogi Adityanath, shame on your government if you are incapable of ensuring payments sugarcane farmers.”
Didn’t call for milk price hike: Kisan Morcha
The Samyukta Kisan Morcha clarified on Sunday that it did not put out any call for boycottof milk sales between March 1-5 by farmers or hiking of the price later on. The comments come a day after a ‘khap panchayat’ in Haryana’s Hisar urged dairy farmers to sell milk at Rs 100 per litre to government cooperative societies in protest against the farm laws. Farmers are requested to ignore any viral message in the name of Morch, it said.