Farmers Movement Archive

JD(U) national council to discuss farmer issue, Bihar polls today

PATNA: JD(U) will discuss and clarify its stand on the ongoing farmers’ agitation against the three new central farm laws at its national council meeting on Sunday. The party will also discuss defection of six of its seven MLAs to BJP in Arunachal Pradesh and decide on contesting assembly elections in West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Kerala and the Union Territory of J & K, either in alliance with a party or on its own, sources said after the first day of JD(U)’s two-day national executive committee meeting held in Patna on Saturday. As many as 60 delegates of the party from various states will participate in the national council meeting. Bihar CM and JD(U) national president Nitish Kumar was present during the first day’s deliberations. It involved the discussions at the level of the national office-bearers to set the agenda for the Sunday meeting. The other major issues that will be on the plate for discussion pertains to the poor (officially, ‘not so good’) performance of JD(U) in the Bihar assembly elections, when the party could win only 43 of the 243 assembly seats, no matter if Nitish became the CM in accordance with the pre-poll arrangement with BJP that secured 74 seats. The NDA’s lead rival from the grand alliance, RJD, emerged as the single largest party with 75 wins. However, the most contentious issue on which JD(U) will clarify its line is related to the ongoing agitation of the farmers mainly confined to the states around the national capital. JD(U) might be in a peculiar situation as the opposition parties, including in Bihar, have declared their open support to the farmers’ stir, sources said. The NDA government in Bihar led by Nitish was the first to annul the Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) Act way back in 2006 that ended the ‘mandi’/bazaar samiti system in the state. Initially, in his speeches, PM Narendra Modi used to recall it to put across that the farmers in Bihar had accepted it, but the agitating farmers have been insisting that it has only exacerbated the problems of the farmers, including the middle, small and marginal farmers.

The Times of India

2020-12-27

Patna