The 58-year-old parliamentarian from Thrissur said the new law that envisages monetizing farmers’ agricultural products would leave nearly 15 million people in agriculture defenseless against large agricultural corporations.
Advocating for the resurrection and strengthening of agricultural commodity marketing committees under the 2003 Act, he said it would ensure that no farmer was exploited by middlemen and that all food products were taken to a Common Market to be sold at auction.
“Without the CMPA, the market would ultimately fall into the hands of corporate greed of multinational companies that are for-profit and do not care about the conditions of poor farmers,” he said. Meanwhile, Punjab’s Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said his government will also combat the Center’s “malicious and anti-national” agricultural marketing laws in a constitutional and legal manner.
He said he will consult lawyers to challenge the laws in the Supreme Court. He also said the laws could endanger the security of the border state, as Pakistan’s ISI was always looking for opportunities to foment trouble.
The CM stated that it does not want Punjab youth and farmers to take up arms to fight for their right to live. “We will do whatever it takes to protect farmers from the Center’s nefarious designs,” he added. Earlier speaking on the matter in Khatkar Kalan, where he sat in dharna, the CM said: “Punjab has lost 35,000 lives to terrorism in senseless violence in the past and with unrest among farmers spreading to other states, the entire nation. be exposed to the ISI threat. ” The Pakistani-backed forces will try to feed off the anguish in India, he said, adding that he will not allow anyone to disturb the peaceful atmosphere of the state, which the new laws had the potential to do. Criticizing the “stepmother treatment” that Punjabi and Punjab farmers receive “to make big corporations like the Adanis happy,” Amarinder said: “Will the Adanis subsidize food for poor Indians?” He added that the new laws will mean the death sentence for the PDS system, in addition to ruining Punjab and its farmers.
Amarinder said the Center’s verbal assurances about MSP cannot be trusted.
“When they can break constitutional guarantees, who can trust their verbal guarantees?” he said, questioning why the MSP had not become a constitutional right in the new laws.
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