Ranchi: JMM and Congress — the two key ruling alliance in Jharkhand — on Monday termed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement on the farm laws in the Rajya Sabha as yet another attempt to run away from addressing the core concerns of the protesting farmers and put the blame on those who are against the Union government’s “unpopular decisions”.
In his address to the Upper House, Modi assured the members that the new farm laws will not the end minimum support price (MSP). “MSP tha, MSP hai aur MSP rahega,” Modi said and accused Congress and other UPA partners of taking a U-turn from their previous stance on farm reforms.
“We only did what Manmohan Singh government wanted to do on farm laws,” he said, quoting from Singh’s speech on farm reforms when he was the prime minister.
Denouncing the community of “Andolan jeevi” (who thrives on protests), Modi also blasted them as “Foreign Destructive Ideology (FDI)” who joined every protest and misled people on every issue.
Strongly condemning the use of the terms in describing the farmers’ protests, JMM general secretary Suprio Bhattacharjee questioned Modi’s alleged shying away from giving a written assurance on his promise of MSP.
Bhattacharjee said, “We welcome the PM’s statement on MSP, but why is he shying away from making his statement into law? This is exactly the protesting farmers have been demanding all these months while battling the cold on the streets.”
Criticising Modi’s quote on Singh, the JMM leader said, “If Modi ji says he did what the UPA government under Manmohan Singh ji wished to do, BJP should rename itself as Congress or merge with it.”
He further said BJP should announce that it would never ever stage any protest if it views the protesters as “Andolan jeevi”. “Is that how you address the farmers who are the backbone of the country? Our jawans who are guarding the borders also hail from the farming community and not from the houses of Adanis or Ambanis,” Bhattacharjee retorted.
State Congress co-working president Rajesh Thakur, too, made similar criticisms. He said, “Manmohan Singh ji didn’t bring in the laws, but it is the Modi government without consulting the stakeholders and the states.”
He also questioned why the Supreme Court raised a question mark on the laws, thereby deferring their implementation by 18 months "if they were so good".
“The problem with this government is that it has a habit of blaming the people. It did the same with demonetisation, Goods and Services Taxes (GST), lockdown and the country faced the consequences,” Thakur said, adding that the NDA should ponder why the people are on the streets today. “If the protesters are Andolan jeevi, BJP should never stage protests in future,” he added.
Opposition BJP, on the other hand, hailed Modi for trying to negotiate with the protester again. Many of the party leaders in the state retweeted the PM’s statements and videos of his speech in the Rajya Sabha.