Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Friday said that Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal’s yet another ‘U-turn’ on the farm laws demonstrated that these moves of the SAD chief were clearly aimed at promoting the Centre’s anti-farmer agenda.
In rejecting the state’s amendment bills, which his party had backed in the Vidhan Sabha, Sukhbir had not just exposed his lack of moral scruples but had also echoed the recent statements of various Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, said the Chief Minister.
This showed clear collusion between SAD and BJP, suggesting that Harsimrat’s resignation from the Union Cabinet and the withdrawal of the Akalis from NDA was nothing but a total farce aimed at befooling the farmers and sabotaging their fight against the central laws, he added.
“First you actively and wholeheartedly supported the Centre’s Farm Ordinances, then quit the NDA calling their Bills anti-farmer, then indulged in a whole lot of political drama through protest rallies and yatras across the state in purported support of the farmers, then openly voted for the state government’s amendment Bills, and are now rejecting the same,” the Chief Minister pointed out, citing the entire sequence of Akali actions over the past few months.
The spate of SAD about-turns on such a vital issue critical to Punjab and its farmers showed that they had absolutely no compulsions in signing a deal even with the devil if it could help protect their political interests, he said.
“After all this, do you really expect the farmers to believe in the sincerity of your trumped-up claims of caring about the farmers’ interests,” Captain Amarinder asked Sukhbir, daring him to give one reason why the people of Punjab, especially the farmers, should trust SAD.
The Chief Minister trashed Sukhbir’s argument that the Akalis did not get the time to study the state government’s Bills, quipping that this was not possible considering the massive legal and other infrastructure at the disposal of SAD.
He took a jibe at Sukhbir’s claim that his party MLAs voted for the Bills without properly going through them, saying “this might explain why the Akalis have been stamping their approval on all kinds of anti-people, anti-India and anti-Punjab legislations of the Union Government over the past 6 years.”
Captain Amarinder also lashed out at Sukhbir for the latter’s statements about the Constitutional and legal position of the state. The Constitution gives the state clear and unequivocal right under Article 254 (II) to seek amendments to central laws, he pointed out, adding that the legislation of the Government of India also fails to stand scrutiny on grounds of being anti-federal.