Why is SAD still with NDA, asks Amarinder Singh amid farm Bills row

Questioning the Akalis alliance with the NDA, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh asked the SAD to list "one pro-farmer initiative" persuaded by it with the BJP-led Centre in the past six years

Questioning the Akalis alliance with the NDA, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Saturday asked the SAD to list "one pro-farmer initiative" persuaded by it with the BJP-led Centre in the past six years.

Hitting out at Badals for "perpetuating lies" in the past few days on agriculture bills, he said they had "openly and shamelessly supported" these since the Ordinances were brought in.

The chief minister, in a statement here, said SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal and former Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal had been fabricating lies on farm bills, which have been completely exposed.

Did either of you even once call the ordinances anti-farmer till they were presented in the Lok Sabha? the chief minister asked Badals.

Did Harsimrat even once, till her resignation, tell farmers that she was trying to persuade the Central government to address their concerns something she is now claiming? he further asked.

Questioning the Akalis alliance with the NDA, the chief minister further asked, Why is SAD still part of the NDA given that, by Harsimrat's own admission, the BJP-led government failed to address the farmers' concerns she put before them?"

Amarinder Singh also asked Harsimrat Kaur and Sukhbir Badal if they can cite even one pro-farmer initiative that they might have undertaken in over past six years to persuade the BJP-led government at the Centre to act on it.

The chief minister said the people of Punjab, especially the farmers, will not forgive them.

The ordinances, which you had been shamefacedly supporting all through till you decided to back off under political compulsions of the fear of losing your farmers' vote-bank, were never discussed or even mentioned at the high-powered meetings a fact on which your coalition partners either deliberately kept in you in dark or which you consciously choose to ignore in your own petty interest, he told the Badals.

Unlike the SAD, the Congress had maintained a consistent stand against the ordinances which the Centre introduced on the sly amid the pandemic and then pushed through the Lok Sabha by the sheer brute majority, Amarinder said.

The Badals should stop lying on such a critical issue, and instead, come out in the open fight against the NDA coalition by withdrawing from the alliance, said the chief minister.

He added that their claims of standing shoulder to shoulder with farmers were "hollow and false" as long as they continued to lie on the subject and remained a part of the "anti-farmer" Central Government.