Capt, Sukhbir continue to trade charges over farm laws, state bills

Reacting to Sukhbir’s allegation that Amarinder colluding with the Centre to get the rail blockade by farmers lifted, the CM said “strange and senseless” remarks showed the Akali leader had completely “lost” the political narrative, causing him to fumble for words and desperate to find a way out.

“Does Sukhbir really believe that I would lead my party to a political suicide with such an act,” Amarinder asked.

The only rational explanation for such “preposterous” comments would be that the SAD leader had “lost all sense of proportion out of sheer desperation” at his and his party’s political “oblivion”, which was no longer a distant possibility but a concrete fact, he added.

On the SAD chief’s suggestion that the state government should have taken the SAD’s advice before bringing the bills against the farm laws in the assembly, the CM said, “It seems the NDA government at the Centre has taken the advice of their then allies, the Akalis, in the matter of the anti-farmer, anti-federal and anti-Constitutional farm laws.”

That would explain why they messed it up so badly and took the unilateral decision to impose laws that are clearly designed to ruin farmers, he added.

Terming the SAD president’s allegation of collusion between him and the BJP as “ludicrous”, the CM said Sukhbir appears to be in a state of “mental despair and denial”, which is leading him to make such nonsensical remarks.

On Sukhbir’s comment that he “come clean” on the state Bills, Amarinder said, “On the one hand you complain when I tell the legislators frankly in the House that the Governor and President may or may not give consent to the Bills, and on the other you say I’m not being honest”.

“The farmers are sick and tired of your games,” Amarinder told Sukhbir, adding that it was SAD which was feeling the heat of the farming community – the reason why they are running around in circles on the Centre’s laws and the state’s Bills.

Meanwhile, Sukhbir again accused the CM of “entering into a deal” with the Centre and get “wishy-washy” bills passed with the sole intention of “sabotaging” the farmers’ agitation. He said the only solution was declaring the entire state as a principal market yard which would have negated the implementation of the central farm laws in Punjab.

“You (Amarinder) know your bills will not be approved by the central government. You have not even annulled the amended APMC Act of 2017 which is a copy of the central agriculture acts. We know you have no straight answers but still we give you 15 days to tell Punjabis why you defrauded them in this manner and why you are hand in glove with the Centre in destroying their future,” Sukhbir said.

The Punjab Assembly on Tuesday had adopted a resolution rejecting the Centre’s new farm laws and passed four bills to counter the Centre’s farm laws.