Farm Ordinances: Congress seeks to revive 2014 land bill movement

Grappling with negative publicity over internal leadership issues and in a bind, Congress got a lease of political life as farmer protests erupted against three agriculture ordinances brought by the Modi government.

Seeking to revive the 2014 land bill movement against the government, Congress top guns have gun-blazing trying to project the government as pro-corporate and anti-farmer.

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Calling the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance, 2020, The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Ordinance, 2020 and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 as “three black ordinances of Modi government,” Rahul Gandhi said that they were a fatal attack on farmers and farm labours and cited it as “yet another anti-farmer conspiracy of Modi Ji”.

Rahul Gandhi had in 2015 led a massive agitation against the NDA government’s Ordinance bringing changes into the 2013 Land Acquisition Act passed by the UPA. Congress had then carried marches from President House to Parliament House and held agitations across the country. Ultimately wary of the anti-farmer tag, the Government had to withdraw the Ordinance after reissuing it thrice.

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Congress had also launched big agitations against the killing of six farmers in the police firing in Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh in 2018. The Congress came to power in the state the same year promising loan waiver to farmers.

Farmers' protest has been a soft belly of the Modi government and Congress has yet sensed an opportunity to browbeat the government on the issue.

Some state governments are also demanding for the withdrawal of these three ordinances, describing them as a violation of the federal structure of the country. The issue has come in handy to Congress, which in the past had also managed to put the government on the mat as some farmer organisations have also upped the ante.

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On Monday, Bhartiya Kisan Union, in a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, demanded the Central government must withdraw recently brought three agriculture Ordinances that it brought on June 5.

After the party’s stiff Opposition to the Ordinances in Parliament on the first day of the Monsoon Session, Congress spokesperson Gaurav Gogoi said at the AICC briefing, “This will give freedom to corporate to brutally exploit the farmers and take away the protection that the Minimum Support Price gives them and the various State Mandi Acts give them.”

Congress, which in the 2019 assembly polls gave a tough fight to the BJP in Haryana, went into a campaign mode on the police lathi-charge against farmers against the farm ordinances in Kurukshetra on Friday. AICC communication department chief and Haryana leader Randeep Singh Surjewala alleged that farmers will be trapped in the contract system through the ordinances and because of these farmers will turn into just laborers.

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Kerala MP Shashi Tharoor supported TMC leader Derek O Briens’ charge or “Ordinance Raj” and alleged that the BJP government is “too willing to short circuit Parliamentary process.” Congress’ efforts to forge an Opposition unity on the issue also bore fruit as Opposition leaders raised the chorus of the government “creating an ordinance raj like one never seen before in last 70 years.”

“Farmers all over India are opposing these ordinances. The government is presenting these ordinances as a big step towards agricultural reforms in the form of One Nation, One Market but BKU is considering these ordinances as Company rule in the agricultural sector,” said BKU President Rattan Man in his memorandum to the Prime Minister.

After holding a protest march in the national capital, BKU national spokesperson Rakesh Tikait said that the farmers are living in fear that these laws will make them captive of companies and corporations.