With intense agitation from farmers over the past fortnight in Punjab and Haryana, two regional allies of the BJP in the states, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP), are feeling the ground slipping under their feet. . As a result, they have moved quickly to appear to be on the side of the farmers.
On Thursday evening, Akali Dal’s lone Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal resigned from the cabinet citing her disagreement with the three agricultural bills proposed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Parliament, which have been the main cause of anger among farmers. In a tweet after her resignation, Harsimrat Badal said she was “proud to support farmers as her daughter and sister.”
In Haryana, BJP ally JJP, led by Senior Deputy Minister Dushyant Singh Chautala, is also feeling the heat of upheaval. On Friday morning, Chautala met with Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on the issue of protests over the three bills enacted by the NDA government: the Agricultural Products Trade and Commerce Ordinance (Promotion and Facilitation) , 2020; The Farmers Agreement (Empowerment and Protection); and the Essential Products (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020, and held another round of meetings with top leaders of his party. The JJP has 10 MLAs in the 90-seat Haryana Assembly.
None other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself has tried to appease the anger of farmers. In his electronic meeting with Bihar’s chief minister Nitish Kumar on Friday, Modi said “misinformation” was being spread about farmers not getting the right prices due to the three farm laws. People who oppose the bills, he said, “are forgetting how conscious the country’s farmers are … Fake news is spreading that government agencies will not get wheat, rice, etc. from farmers. This is an outright lie, completely wrong and an attempt to fool farmers, “he said.
JJP shares many similarities with Akali Dal in that its main support base is farmers in the states. Both parties have also strengthened after presenting themselves as strong regional anti-center forces. While Akali Dal has a history of standing on the shoulders of farmers’ agitation over water and fertilizer supply issues, the JJP has presented itself as a pro-farmers party with Dushyant Chautala campaigning on tractors in recent assembly elections and repeatedly questioning the promise of the Center. of doubling the income of farmers.
The fervor with which the protests are unfolding seems only to suggest that the unrest will intensify in the coming days. Therefore, both parties run the risk of losing the support of the very people who brought them to power. Both BJP allies have been feeling the brunt of the farmers ‘turmoil, as farmers’ bodies called for ‘rail roko andolan’ and closure in rural India over the next week.
On Friday, a 55-year-old farmer tried to commit suicide in Badal’s hometown of Punjab by consuming poison. His condition is said to be critical. A congressional MLA in Punjab has reportedly resigned over the issue and former state cabinet minister Navjot Singh Sidhu has also made his pro-farmer stance clear through a series of tweets.
With anger among farmers in these two states clearly rising, the question before the parties, political analysts say, was who will blink first.
“Clearly an advantage: Akali Dal. They made the move first realizing that their main vote base, the farmer, was angry. So they decided to reassert their regional party position and say that they will no longer play a secondary role in the BJP “. In fact, the signal that the Akalis have given now is that if their alliance has to stay, then BJP has to follow the Akalis and not the other way around, “said Pramod Kumar, director of the think tank Institute for Development and Communication (IDC ).
Kumar goes one step further and says that for Akalis the growing anger of farmers against the bills enacted by BJP was a great opportunity. “Since the early 1960s, when Master Tara Singh was replaced by Fateh Singh, Akali Dal’s main supporter has been the farmer and their main drive has been federalism. If they had not taken this step, they would have become politically extinct. No there is an option to make this decision. Akali Dal came to power with the feeling that the Center should not impose conditions on the state. Now they cannot be seen to be shunning that principle, “Kumar said.
He added that Akalis is only following the principle that all successful regional parties have followed: that you fight for local problems and keep the influence of the Center in check. The question now was whether the JJP will also follow Akali’s lead.
Farmer leaders in Haryana feel that the JJP-BJP combine has no choice but to settle the issue of farm bills. The unrest has intensified greatly here since September 10, when the police charged the farmers protesting in Kurukshetra. On Friday, the brother of MP CM Dushyant Chautala, Digvijay Chautala, a senior JJP leader and leader of the party’s youth wing, in a press conference spoke out strongly against the lathicha charge in farmers. Dushyant, who claims to understand farmers’ problems as he comes from a farmer’s family, said those responsible for ordering the lathicharge to farmers will be punished and the deputy CM had no role to play in the incident.
Satyawan, chairman of the Haryana-based All India Kisan Khet Mazduur Sangathan farmers body, said farmers were trying hard in recent weeks to contact top BJP political leaders to convince them that the bills they were against. their interests, but no one has paid attention to them.
“People in power are realizing that the floor is slipping. The BJP believes that since it has a gross majority in Parliament, it can do whatever it pleases. In the next few days, its government will see power. of our On September 20, farmers from the two states will commemorate ‘Pratirodh Diwas’ and on September 25, a rural closure has been called for across India, “he said.
While protests over various other farmer problems continue in many other states, such as UP and Rajasthan over non-payment of sugar cane quotas, in Punjab and Haryana they have intensified because most of the farmers who are beneficiaries of the Minimum Subsistence Price (MSP) come from these two states. There is a feeling among farmers here that the three farm laws will corporatize the agricultural sector, reduce state purchases, and not even give them the MSP for their products.
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