NEW DELHI: A day after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget, a delegation of farmer leaders from six states met the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi in Parliament House complex on Wednesday and apprised him of their concerns.
The delegation comprised 12 farmers from Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Gandhi said the Congress and the INDIA bloc allies will raise the issue of legal guarantee for Minimum Support Prices (MSP) in Parliament and pressure the government. “We have mentioned in our manifesto about a legal guarantee for MSP, which can be implemented without any hassles,” he said.
“During the meeting, we decided that we will discuss the matter with the INDIA bloc partners and then start putting pressure on the government to frame a law on MSP,” he said. The Congress MP also referred to the promise of implementing MSP with a legal guarantee in the party manifesto.
“Congress will give a legal guarantee to the MSP announced by the government every year, as recommended by the Swaminathan Commission,” said its manifesto.
It has also promised that MSP payable to the farmer-seller at the procurement centers and agricultural produce market committees will be directly credited digitally to the bank account of the farmer.
Gandhi’s meeting with the farm leaders was also attended by senior Congress leaders KC Venugopal, former Punjab CM Charanjit Singh Channi, Raja Brar, Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, Gurjeet Singh Aujla, Dharamvir Gandhi, Amar Singh, Deepender Singh Hooda, and Jai Prakash.
The Congress leader also said the farmer leaders were not allowed entry into the Parliament complex. They were allowed only after his intervention. “We had invited them here to meet us. But they were not allowed here (in Parliament). May be they were not allowed in because they were farmers,” the Congress leader said.
Speaking to media, the farmer leaders said that the Gandhi expressed solidarity with them against the ‘atrocities’ of the Haryana government.
The farm leaders who attended the meeting included Jagjit Singh, Lakhwinder Singh, Shantha Kumar, Abhimanyu, Nallanala Venkateshwar Rao, Pandian Ramalingam, Tejveer Singh, Swaran Singh Pandher, Surjit Singh, Ramandeep Singh Mann, Guramneet Singh and Amarjeet Singh.
Venugopal later wrote on micro-blogging site X, “Snubbed by the government, beaten with sticks and welcomed with bullets, these farmers have lost all expectations from the government.”