India’s Congress Leaders Protest Farmer Evictions, Slam BJP and AAP
NEW DELHI, March 21- Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi joined Congress lawmakers from Punjab on Thursday to protest within the Parliament complex against the eviction of farmers from protest sites at the Punjab border, escalating tensions over agricultural policies.
Congress president and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) of being “anti-farmer.”
“It appears that two anti-farmer parties have now joined hands against the country’s food providers! First, the Punjab government called the farmers for talks and then forcibly removed them from the protest site,” Kharge said in a post on social media platform X.
Kharge condemned the detention of senior farmer leaders Jagjit Singh Dallewal and Sarwan Singh Pandher by Punjab police, saying both the BJP and AAP were acting out of “arrogance of power.” He warned that India’s 62-crore-strong farming community would not forgive them.
“The country has not forgotten Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh, when farmers were fired upon under BJP rule. How a minister’s son in the Modi government crushed farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri. How a farmer from Rajasthan hanged himself in Kejriwal’s rally in 2015 while he remained a silent spectator,” Kharge said.
The Congress chief also criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government over its failure to enact a law guaranteeing Minimum Support Price (MSP) for crops, accusing both the BJP and AAP of betraying farmers.
In the Parliament complex, Congress MPs from Punjab staged a demonstration against the police crackdown on farmers, who had been protesting at the Shambhu and Khanauri borders of the state for more than a year. Congress leaders Sukhjinder Randhawa, Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, Gurjit Aujla, and Dharamvir Gandhi participated in the protest, raising slogans against the AAP government in Punjab and the BJP-led central government.
Gandhi briefly joined the protest to express solidarity with the farmers and his party colleagues. Protesters held placards in support of farmers’ demands for a legally guaranteed MSP.
Criticizing Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, Congress leaders alleged that he was working in coordination with the BJP to suppress farmer protests.
X and the offices of the BJP and AAP did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
