Answer 3 questions, then talk of farm laws: CM to Sukhbir Singh Badal

CHANDIGARH: Challenging Sukhbir Singh Badal’s “moral right” to question the Congress government on the farm laws, Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh on Friday dared him to first answer his three questions. The CM also accused the SAD president of trying to hijack the farmers’ agitation to push his own party’s agenda.
Amarinder said Sukhbir should refrain from commenting on the black farm laws till he gives satisfactory answers to three vital questions, the answers to which every single farmer of Punjab wants to know.
“Why did Harsimrat Kaur Badal not oppose the farm ordinances when they were first approved by the Union Cabinet, of which she was then a member? Why did Sukhbir not support the state government at the all-party meeting that he (Amarinder) had convened to evolve a consensus against the blatantly anti-farmer legislations? Why did the Akalis boycott the Vidhan Sabha session in which the other parties (barring BJP) had voted in favour of the resolution on the agricultural laws?” he said.
Amarinder said he has been asking these questions to Sukhbir and Harsimrat for the past several weeks, but the Akali leaders have been persistently ignoring them. It is clear that the duo has no justification for their actions, which has brought the situation to such a pass where the very survival of the farmers is at stake, he added.
Reacting to Sukhbir’s request to the Prime Minister to talk to farmer organisations and to listen to the voice of the people, he asked why he did not remind the PM of his responsibility towards farmers all these years when he was colluding with BJP to ruin the farming community.
On Sukhbir’s talk about forming a national pro-farmer front with “like-minded parties”, Amarinder said SAD has ostensibly already quit the coalition of “like-minded parties”, whose only common interest is to ruin agriculture and appease the corporate honchos, who are controlling them.
“These antics won’t work,” said Amarinder, adding that Sukhbir should plead guilty for his anti-farmer and anti-Punjab actions and try to make amends instead of wasting his time attacking the state government.