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'No link to farm stir': Narendra Tomar as BJP routed in Punjab local body polls
The agriculture minister instead said that the party was already weak in Punjab and also contested separately from the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).
Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Thursday said it would be inappropriate to link the results of the municipal corporation elections in Punjab with the ongoing farmers’ protests against the three central farm laws. Tomar’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose government at the Centre enacted the laws, was wiped out in the elections while the ruling Congress, which has backed the agitation, registered a clean sweep.
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“It is inappropriate to link the result of municipal corporation polls in Punjab with farmers’ agitation. We were weak in Punjab and used to fight polls in alliance with the Akali Dal. But we fought separately this time, which caused losses to us,” news agency ANI quoted Tomar as saying in Assam’s Guwahati. Tomar has been appointed as the BJP’s election in-charge in the poll-bound northeastern state, where the party has an incumbent government.
The BJP’s total wipeout in the Punjab local body elections has been linked directly with the three legislations, as the state has been the epicentre of the anti-farm law protests. It has also never been the saffron party's stronghold. The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), with whom the BJP governed Punjab as recently as early 2017, after which the Congress came to power, parted ways with it in protest against the laws. Harsimrat Kaur Badal, who was the lone SAD representative in the central government, resigned last September, just days after the passage of the laws.
The Punjab local body elections saw the BJP suffer defeat even in Pathankot, which is considered its bastion. The party currently has three Members of Parliament (MP) from the northern state -- two in Lok Sabha and one in Rajya Sabha. Union minister Som Parkash, who, along with central colleagues Tomar and Piyush Goyal has been holding talks with the farmers’ unions, is the party’s Lok Sabha MP from Hoshiarpur, while actor Sunny Deol represents Gurdaspur in the Lower House. In both places, the party suffered heavy losses.
Also Read | Congress steals the show in Majha, defeats BJP in Pathankot
On Thursday, the protesting farmers held a four-hour nationwide rail blockade to put pressure on the central government to revoke the laws. Total 11 rounds of talks have failed to resolve the deadlock between the Centre and farmers’ unions.
