The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which is among the Opposition parties supporting farmers protesting against the three contentious farm laws, on Thursday accused the Centre of not being bothered for the farmers. Speaking in Rajya Sabha, AAP MP Sanjay Singh urged the central government to ‘have mercy and repeal the three black laws.’
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“Farmers are protesting for 76 days, they are being lathi-charged, called traitors, terrorists and Khalistanis. Talks happened 11 times, all failed, the government claims to be a call away, but doesn’t bother. About 165 farmers lost their lives. Have mercy and repeal the three black laws,” news agency ANI quoted Singh as saying in Rajya Sabha. Singh’s remarks came a day after he and two other AAP MPs were suspended for a day for creating ‘ruckus’ in the House on the issue of farm laws.
11 rounds of talks have taken place between the Centre and farmers’ unions representing the protesting farmers. The 11th round took place on January 22; in the 10th round, which took place on January 20, the government offered to keep the laws in abeyance for one-and-a-half-years, a proposal which the farmers rejected a day later. On January 30, in a virtual all-party meet, held four days after violence during the ‘Kisan tractor parade’ on Republic Day, prime minister Narendra Modi reiterated that the proposal to keep the laws in abeyance was still on, adding that the government was ‘just a phone call away.’
{{/usCountry}}11 rounds of talks have taken place between the Centre and farmers’ unions representing the protesting farmers. The 11th round took place on January 22; in the 10th round, which took place on January 20, the government offered to keep the laws in abeyance for one-and-a-half-years, a proposal which the farmers rejected a day later. On January 30, in a virtual all-party meet, held four days after violence during the ‘Kisan tractor parade’ on Republic Day, prime minister Narendra Modi reiterated that the proposal to keep the laws in abeyance was still on, adding that the government was ‘just a phone call away.’
{{/usCountry}}The talks between the Centre and farmers’ leaders have been stuck on two major issues: legal guarantee for Minimum Support Price (MSP) and a complete rollback of the laws; on the latter, the government has categorically said that it won’t withdraw the laws, and has instead offered various other options, including amendments, which have been rejected by the unions.
The AAP, meanwhile, has been supporting the protests from the beginning. In the initial days, the AAP government in Delhi rejected the police’s request to turn some of the city's grounds into temporary prisons. Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and AAP MLAs tore copies of the farm laws in a special one-day session of the Delhi Assembly in December 2020. The party has also been providing water and internet connectivity to farmers protesting on the borders of Delhi. Last Friday, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia visited Ghazipur, one of the three protest sites in the capital city.
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On Wednesday, Kejriwal said that his government will help find farmers ‘missing’ since the violence on Republic Day.