West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday threatened to launch a nationwide agitation if the “anti-farmer” laws were not withdrawn by the government.
“I am very much concerned about the farmers, their lives and livelihood. GOI must withdraw the anti-farmer bills. If they do not do so immediately we will agitate throughout the state and the country. From the very start, we have been strongly opposing these anti-farmer bills,” Banerjee said.
“We have called a meeting of the the All India Trinamool Congress on Friday, December 4. We will discuss how the Essential Commodities Act is impacting common people and resulting in sky rocketing prices. The central government must withdraw this anti-people law,” she said.
“The GOI is selling everything. You cannot sell Railways, Air India, Coal, BSNL, BHEL, banks, defence, etc. Withdraw ill-conceived disinvestment & privatization policy. We must not allow treasures of our nation to be transformed into BJP party’s personal assets,” Mamata added.
Meanwhile, farmers’ representatives today began another round of discussions with the Centre. The last meeting between the two sides had failed to break the impasse on Tuesday.
Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh met Home Minister Amit Shah in a separate meeting and appealed to both Centre and farmers to quickly resolve deadlock over Farm Laws.
On Tuesday, Narendra Singh Tomar, Piyush Goyal and Som Prakash interacted with the representatives of Farmers Organizations of Punjab in Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi.
The Ministers again explained the benefits of Farm Reform Acts to the representatives of the Farmers’ Unions. Various issues related to Farm Reform Acts were discussed at length and talks were held in a cordial atmosphere, according to the government statement.
During the deliberations, the Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister proposed to constitute an expert committee to put forth the issues of farmers so as to resolve them with mutual consent but the representative of the Farmers Union suggested that all the representatives will attend further round of discussions with the Government to resolve the matter amicably.
