Farmers across India have protested against the centre’s new farm laws (File)
New Delhi:
Congress-ruled states are expected to hold special Assembly sessions to pass a bill to defer implementation of the three controversial farm laws that were cleared by the centre last month and which have triggered massive protests across the country.
A draft version of the bill, which has been drawn up by the party’s central leadership and sent to states that it rules, outlines two provisions. The first allows the state government to decide on date of implementation of the centre’s laws. The second ensures contract farming between the farmer and any company, or aggregator, cannot take place below a minimum support price (MSP).
It is unclear at this time if states where the Congress holds power in an alliance with other parties – such as Maharashtra and Jharkhand – will hold similar special sessions, or if states ruled by non-Congress and non-BJP governments – such as Kerala and Bengal – will follow suit.
It is important to note these bills, once passed by each state, must be cleared by President Ram Nath Kovind. The President can refuse to sign them, but will have to explain that refusal.
The proposed provisions are aimed squarely at two of the Congress’s chief complaints about the new laws – it disallows MSP for farmers and opens them up (particularly the more vulnerable small and marginal farmers) to the predatory instincts of corporates and large-scale private players.
The Congress, along with other opposition parties, has launched fierce protests; this morning Rahul Gandhi was in Punjab’s Moga, where he warned farmers against the Narendra Modi government’s plan to destroy them and said the Congress would repeal the “black laws” at the first chance.
Farmers across India have held protest marches, sat on railway tracks and disrupted traffic on highways to signal their discontent with the centre’s new laws.
Rahul Gandhi hit out at the “black laws” and said the Congress would repeal them when in power
The centre, however, has insisted that the laws give farmers the ability to sell their produce at markets and prices of their choosing. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has verbally assured farmers they can continue to avail of an MSP and that the government will buy food grains at that price.
However, lakhs of farmers remain unconvinced and have called for clauses that guarantee MSP and protect weaker members of their community against the dangers of contract farming.
Protests in Punjab – where the Congress is in power – are among the most vociferous in the country, with Chief Minister Amarinder Singh himself campaigning against the centre’s laws.
“What they (the central government) have done is anti-national,” Mr Singh said earlier, during a protest at the ancestral village of iconic freedom fighter Bhagat Singh.
Last month interim Congress chief Sonia Gandhi asked party-ruled states to “explore possibilities to pass laws… which allows state legislatures to… negate the anti-agriculture central laws“.
“This would enable the states to bypass unacceptable anti-farmers’ provisions in the three draconian agricultural laws… would also alleviate the farmers from the grave injustice done by the Modi government and BJP,” the Congress said in its statement.
The constitutional rule Mrs Gandhi referred to in that statement allows state legislatures to enforce laws “repugnant to the parliament law” if they get presidential approval.
In 2015, then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley advised states to use the same route to bypass a land acquisition law passed by the Congress when it was in power – between 2004 and 2014.
