‘An insult that farmers treated as terrorists’: Sanjay Raut

Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Sunday lashed at the Centre for preventing farmers from entering Delhi and said that it was regrettable that farmers were being treated like “terrorists”.

“The way farmers have been stopped from entering Delhi, it looks like as if they do not belong to this country. They have been treated like terrorists. Since they are Sikh and have come from Punjab and Haryana, they are being called Khalistani. It is an insult to farmers,” news agency ANI quoted Raut as saying.

Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav also hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for “humiliating the farmers by calling them terrorists.”

“Humiliating the farmers by calling them terrorists is the worst form of BJP. This is a conspiracy of the BJP, which supports the rich and wants to mortgage small-businesses, shopkeepers, roads transport everything to big corporates. If according to the BJP, the farmers are terrorists, then the party should swear that they will not consume the produce grown by farmers,” the SP chief tweeted in Hindi..

Meanwhile, the Centre approached the protesting farmers with an offer to hold talks before December 3. The letter from home secretary, however, laid down some conditions. The offer was rejected by the farmer unions.

On Saturday, home minister Amit Shah had said that his government was ready to hold talks with the agitating farmers. “The Union government is ready to hold talks. The agriculture minister has invited them on December 3 for a discussion. The government is ready to deliberate on every problem and demand of farmers,” he said.

Farm unions are protesting against the three contentious agricultural laws passed by the Centre in September. The three laws, that according to the farmers would make them vulnerable to exploitation by big corporations, are - The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020 and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act 2020.

(with agency inputs)