Pushed on the back foot over the farm bill, Congress on Saturday hit back at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing him of “maliciously distorting” the party manifesto for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, which spoke of creating small markets before repealing the APMC Act.
Modi and BJP leaders had accused the Congress of hypocrisy by proposing to farm reforms, similar to those in the three Ordinances, in the party manifesto and resisting the same after being voted to the opposition.
Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram appealed to other opposition parties to join hands to oppose the bills that seek to replace the three ordinances “at every forum” to ensure that they do not become a law. The bills come up for discussion in the Rajya Sabha on Sunday.
Chidambaram rejected BJP’s charge of “hypocrisy”, contending that the Congress manifesto would have given farmers multiple accessible markets and choice.
“Once that is accomplished, the Congress Manifesto promise on repealing the APMC Act and making trade in agricultural produce free would be a natural sequel in course of time,” said Chidambaram, one of the authors of the manifesto.
The Congress leader said the Modi government had surrendered to the corporates and traders as the farm bills do not contain the clause that assures the farmer that the price offered by private purchasers shall not be less than the minimum support price.
“The bills assume perversely that the farmer and the private purchaser have equal bargaining power. They do not. The small farmer will be at the mercy of the private purchaser,” Chidambaram said.
As Congress stepped up opposition to the bill, the BJP pulled out the Congress manifesto for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and old interviews of Rahul Gandhi favouring exemption of farm produce from APMC Act.
“Rahul Gandhi in this interview, sometime in 2014, is trying to explain why bringing in agriculture reforms would give more choices to farmers, allowing them to sell produce to a multitude of buyers. But he and his party are now opposing the very reforms! Inconsistency is a virtue,” BJP IT Cell chief Amit Malviya said, tagging a clip from Rahul’s interview.
Chidambaram said successive Congress governments had built the food security system on three pillars – MSP, public procurement and PDS.