BJP supporters want to suppress farmers' opposition to agri laws: Ajit Singh

Rashtriya Lok Dal president Ajit Singh on Tuesday alleged that BJP supporters want to suppress the farmers' opposition to the new contentious agriculture laws by the use of force.

The RLD chief said this during his visit to Soram village here a day after a clash between supporters of his party and the BJP in the presence of Union minister Sanjeev Balyan, which resulted in injuries to three to four people.

Citing the ongoing farmers’ protest against the new farm laws in Delhi, Singh, a former Union minister, alleged that the BJP-led government has made it “a habit to use force to suppress any farmer’s voice”. “First they lobbed tear gas shells at protesters in Delhi, then opened water cannons on them during winter, baton charged them. The government then barricaded the protest sites to stop the farmers and even called the protesters Khalistani and terrorist, only to insult the farming community,”Singh said at Soram, the headquarters of the 'sarv khap', which wields influence on farmers and locals in the region. “Now, the BJP supporters want to suppress the farmers’ opposition by the use of force,” he claimed, according to an RLD statement.

Talking about the farmers' movement, Singh wondered if it was wrong to oppose the contentious laws and support the farmers who are protesting against it. “Or is it wrong to ask why the rates of sugarcane have not been increased or why the rate of diesel and petrol and power bills are continuing to rise every day or why there is no law on MSP (minimum support price) for crops,” he asked. Singh, the son of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh, alleged that over 200 people have died during the ongoing farmers’ protest in Delhi but the government is not ready to listen to them and is only busy insulting the community.

He claimed that the BJP wants to end the protest by dividing it on the lines of caste and religion and called on people not to let the division happen.

Thousands of farmers are camping at Delhi's border points of Tikri, Singhu and Ghazipur since November 2020 with a demand that the Centre repeal the three farm laws enacted in September and make a new one guaranteeing MSP, saying the legislations would destroy their livelihoods.

The government, which has held 11 rounds of formal talks with the protesting farmers unions, has maintained that the laws are pro-farmer.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)