Prime Minister Modi said last week that the new laws will boost farmers’ incomes.
Amid the ongoing protest by farmers on the Delhi borders against the Center’s new agricultural laws, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet with members of the farming community, including Sikh farmers in Gujarat, during a visit to the district of Kutch on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Modi will be in Dhordo in Kutch to lay the groundwork for various projects coming up in different parts of the border district, an official statement said Monday.
These projects include the world’s largest hybrid renewable energy park, a desalination plant and a milk cooling plant.
Before the main event, the Prime Minister, who will be on a one-day visit to his home state, will hold talks with farmers from the Kutch district on the spot.
A group of Sikh farmers, settled in areas near the Indo-Pak border, have been invited to interact with the prime minister, according to a statement from the state government’s Information Department.
According to a rough estimate, around 5,000 Sikh families reside in the Lakhpat taluka area of the Kutch district.
Sikhs began to settle in Lakhpat after then-Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri urged citizens to settle in this arid piece of land after the 1965 India-Pakistan war.
For the past few days, farmers, most of them from Punjab and Haryana, have been protesting outside Delhi against the 2020 Farmers’ Agricultural Price Guarantee and Services Agreement (Empowerment and Protection); the Trade in Agricultural Products and Trade (Promotion and Facilitation) Act of 2020; and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act 2020.
Enacted in September, the three agricultural laws have been projected by the government as major reforms in the agricultural sector that will eliminate middlemen and allow farmers to sell anywhere in the country.
However, protesting farmers have expressed fear that the new laws would pave the way to remove the Minimum Livelihood Price (MSP) safety cushion and wipe out the mandis, leaving them at the mercy of large corporations.
The Center has repeatedly tried to allay fears about the new farm laws and stated that they will not change the existing MSP regime.
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