Farmers Movement Archive

BJP considers farmers God... repeal of laws to avoid tension: Rajnath Singh

Defence minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday said the Union government decided to accept the farmers’ demands of recalling the three agri laws to ensure that the situation did not turn ugly.Addressing a meeting of booth presidents of the Avadh region in Sitapur, Rajnath said that when farmers refused to relent despite several explanations, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi showed largeheartedness by announcing withdrawal of the farm laws.“I have been born to a farmers’ family, and our party considers the farmers as God. One can just see how many times during the regime of Congress and other political parties, farmers were fired at. But we never wanted such a situation. The three farm bills were passed by Parliament, but we decided that if the farmers were not ready to listen, let us agree to their demands. Our heads would always remain bowed before our annadatas,” he said.“In this UP, innocent ‘kar sevaks’ were fired at during the Samajwadi Party rule. But, we can neither open fire on farmers nor on Ram bhakts,” Rajnath said, pitching the BJP as pro-farmer government ahead of the 2022 UP assembly polls. He also referred to the Kisan Samman Nidhi of ₹6,000 per annum that the Modi government has been providing to farmers as proof of the government’s pro-farmer tilt. “I was the chief minister when the then farmer leader Mahendra Singh Tikait decided to march till the chief minister’s office. The police officers wanted to stop him, but I said, no, we won’t stop the farmers, and we allowed them to march till the chief minister’s office,” he said. Rajnath also slammed the Samajwadi Party chief and former CM Akhilesh Yadav for his remarks on Jinnah“Where was the need to bring in Jinnah in these elections? There was no need to bring in such a person who was responsible for the division of the country,” Rajnath said, adding that several Muslims have also differed with Akhilesh’s remarks. “I wish to congratulate my Muslim brothers for disagreeing with the SP chief’s remarks as all of them agreed that Jinnah was responsible for the country’s partition,” Rajnath said. The defence minister spoke of his recent visit to Rezang La in the high Himalayas in Ladakh, and said that he decided to undertake the visit as a mark of respect to country’s brave soldiers who guard the borders in -20 degrees Celsius temperature. “I had gone to inaugurate the war memorial at Rezang La in memory of those brave soldiers who had laid down their lives to protect the country. Vastly outnumbered, yet they fought bravely and on coming to know of their bravery I ordered a grand war memorial in their memory,” he said. “Just as soldiers are required to guard the country sovereignty, BJP too is required to give good governance to the country,” he said, adding that he was confident of the party coming to power with a two-thirds majority in the 2022 UP polls. The former BJP chief also praised the Yogi Adityanath government in UP. “Today, there is fear among criminals and law and order was never so good. The government is practising clean politics,” he said.Hitting back, the Samajwadi Party accused the BJP of “shifting the goalposts”. “The BJP is an expert at shifting the goalposts. We saw how after troubling the farmers, comparing them to terrorists and in fact doing everything it could to malign the farmers and their agitation, it finally withdrew the three black laws after realising that the farmers weren’t ready to budge. Yet, such is their politics that they are now positioning themselves as pro-farmers. As for Jinnah talk, why don’t BJP leaders consult their topmost leader Lal Krishna Advani and check out his views on him. The BJP’s credibility is so low that the farmers have refused to believe them until they withdraw the three farm bills in Parliament. Moreover, this government has still not given any assurance on law on MSP whereas we have already promised that when voted to power we would ensure that the kin of those farmers who died during the agitation are each given ₹25 lakh,” said Samajwadi Party leader IP Singh.

Hindustan Times

26-11-2021

India