Niti Aayog’s RTI reply on farm laws exposes Centre, SAD and AAP: Capt Amarinder

Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Wednesday said that with an RTI response exposing the lie of the Centre’s claim on the farm laws having been approved by the high-powered committee on agricultural reforms, it was now obvious that the Akali Dal and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had been spreading a carnage of lies at the behest of the BJP-led government, with whom the two parties were working in collusion to damage the interests of the farmers.

Media reports citing a reply by the Niti Aayog to a Right to Information (RTI) query suggest that the farm Ordinances were promulgated and introduced in Parliament in June 2020 without the report of the Chief Ministers’ committee being ever appraised by the Governing Council of NITI Aayog, he added.

Far from basing the farm laws on the discussions and decisions of the committee, the fact, as validated by the RTI response, was that the committee report had not even been placed till now before the Governing Council of the NITI Aayog, Captain Amarinder pointed out. Once the report is made public, everyone will now know who said what in the committee meetings, where Punjab was not even a part in the first one, while the second discussed some financial issues with Manpreet Badal in attendance and the third only participated by secretary-level officials, he added.

Dubbing the SAD as a fake champion of the farmers, the Chief Minister said unlike the Akalis, who had been playing double games on the farm laws’ issue, Rahul and the entire Congress had been steadfastly fighting for their rights from the outset. “You should be ashamed of playing with the emotions and the lives of the farmers, without them none of us can survive a day,” he remarked, asserting that his government will not allow the interests of the farmers to be trampled by the likes of the power-seeking Badals and Kejriwal.