Call Assembly session in 7 days or face gherao: SAD to CM Amarinder

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 12

The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Monday gave a seven-day ultimatum to Punjab Chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh to convene a special session of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha to declare the entire state a notified Mandi (Principal Market Area) and reject the Centre’s recent Acts on farm marketing as well as repeal its own amended APMC Act of 2017.

The SAD declared that in the event of Amarinder Singh’s refusal to convene the session, the party would gherao his residence.

A decision to this effect was taken at a special meeting of the SAD Core Committee chaired by party president Sukhbir Singh Badal here this afternoon.

The Core Committee reiterated its continued firm support to the farmers’ organisations fighting for the cause of the beleaguered peasantry especially with regard to the three central Acts.

Giving details of decisions taken at the Core Committee meeting, Harcharan Bains, Principal Adviser to the SAD president, said, “The ultimatum to Amarinder Singh has become necessary in view of the CM’s continued refusal to take a clear stand against the anti-farmer Acts of the Government of India as well as his stubborn refusal to declare the entire State a Principal Market Area where the center’s Acts would no longer be implementable.”

Bains said that the party’s ultimatum comes in the wake of Amarinder’s daily flip flops on the calling of the session. “He has been playing hide and seek with the people and their representatives on the convening of the session, promising to call it one day and going back on it the next. The same ambivalence and evasiveness marks Amarinder’s stand on the three Acts of the Government of India on farm marketing. We call for an end to this politics of evasion. The SAD wants the center to make Assured Marketing of farmers’ crops at Minimum Support Prince (MSP) a constitutionally mandatory provision at par with the fundamental right. The party also wants the MSP be fixed as per the Swaminathan Formula of 50% profit plus the sum total of all the costs incurred by the farmers. The party wants the recommendations of the CACP to be binding on the Government of India.”

The SAD Core Committee also decided to take up the issue of early reopening of the Kartarpur Corridor with the Union External Affairs minister soon to ensure Sikh pilgrims could pay obeisance at the shrine in Pakistan during the run up to the 551th Parkash Purab of Guru Nanak Dev.

A party delegation will meet the External Affairs minister in this regard.

The meeting also noted that despite the fact that SC Welfare minister Sadhu Singh Dharamsot had been indicted for engineering an Rs 69 crore scam involving the scholarships of scheduled caste children, the chief minister had not taken any action against him. “The core committee serves an ultimatum to the chief minister to sack Dharamsot immediately and register a criminal case against him or be ready to face a sustained agitation.”