Three MPs -- Congress' Pratap Singh Bajwa and Chhaya Verma and former Akali Dal leader Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa -- on Monday walked out of a Parliamentary Standing Committee meeting after their demand for a discussion on the contentious farm laws and their consequences was rejected by the panel chairman.
Bajwa, Verma and Dhindsa referred to the ongoing protest by farmers at Delhi borders during the meeting and demanded that the issue be discussed at the meeting of the Standing Committee on Agriculture, sources said.
The agenda of the meeting was to hear from the representatives of the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying in connection with the examination of the 'Status of Veterinary Services and Availability of Animal Vaccine in the Country''.
After the panel's Chairperson and BJP's Bagalkot MP Parvatagouda Chandanagouda Gaddigoudar refused to discuss the matter, the three MPs walked out of the meeting in protest.
Bajwa and Dhindsa are MPs from Punjab while Verma is from Chhattisgarh.
Dhindsa, who had rebelled against the Badals in the Akali Dal, had recently announced that he had returned the Padma Bhushan awarded to him in 2019 in protest against the farm laws.
On 4 December, 2020, Dhindsa wrote to President Ram Nath Kovind saying that he was returning the Padma Bhushan when farmers were facing a "vilification campaign and hostile attitude". He had claimed that he did not receive a response from Rashtrapati Bhavan on his letter.