Centre should immediately repeal farm laws, no committee can do it: AAP

The protesting farmers have been firm in their demand for the repeal of the laws

A day after the Supreme Court set up a four-member committee to end the impasse over new farm laws, the AAP on Wednesday demanded that the Centre immediately repeal the legislations as no panel can do it.

Addressing a press conference, AAP spokesperson and MLA Raghav Chadha said all the four members of the Supreme Court-appointed panel to provide justice to the farmers protesting against the laws have earlier supported these legislations.

"We believe that this power is with the central government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and no committee or panel can do this work," he said.

Chadha claimed that panel member B S Mann who has supported these farm laws is a confidant of Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh.

While eight rounds of negotiations so far between the government and a representative-group of thousands of farmers protesting against three farm laws have failed to resolve the crisis, the Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the implementation of the three Acts till further orders and set up a four-member committee to end the impasse.

However, the protesting farmer unions have said they will not appear before the committee as they consider it to be "pro-government". They have, however, shown willingness to attend the scheduled ninth round of talks on January 15 with the government, though they have asserted they would not settle for anything less than a complete repeal of the laws.

Chadha said that the AAP demands that in the next round of talks PM Modi directly talk to the farmers and immediately repeal these "anti-farmer" laws.

Thousands of farmers, mostly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, have been protesting at several border points of Delhi since November 28 last year, demanding a repeal of the three laws and a legal guarantee to the minimum support price (MSP) procurement system for their crops.

Enacted in September last year, the three laws have been projected by the Centre as major reforms in the agriculture sector that will remove middlemen and allow farmers to sell their produce anywhere in the country.

However, the protesting farmers have expressed their apprehension that the new laws would pave the way for eliminating the safety cushion of the MSP and do away with the mandi (wholesale market) system, leaving them at the mercy of big corporates.