Why minister wasn’t sent to hold parleys, asks Harsimrat

Tribune News Service

Bathinda/Muktsar, October 14

Former Union Minister and Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal today expressed displeasure over the meeting of farmers with the Centre in New Delhi.

After the meeting, she tweeted, “It’s shocking that the Government of India called farmer organisations to Delhi to hold sham talks to discredit them. This is no way to behave with farmers agitating for three months. If the Government of India did not have any solution to the impasse with farm organisations, it shouldn’t have called them to the Capital (sic).”

In another tweet, she wrote, “I commend farm leaders for walking out of the meeting after realising a bureaucrat was going to take it even as the MoS, Agriculture, had been deputed to explain to the farmers of Punjab on how the new laws would benefit them. This is sheer skulduggery (sic).”

Dialogue a sham

It is shocking that the Union Government called farm organisations to Delhi for holding sham talks to discredit them. This is no way to behave with farmers. —Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Bathinda MP

Further, she tweeted, “If the Government of India is serious about resolving grievances of farmers, it should approach the talks with a clean heart. Repeal the farm laws which have been rejected by the ‘kisan’ and ‘khet mazdoor’ and frame new ones keeping in view the interests of farmers and not of corporates (sic).”

Earlier in the day, Harsimrat had tweeted, “Today is a day of reckoning for the NDA government. It has to conclusively prove it truly listens to ‘jan ki baat’ and is ready to resolve grievances of farmers by acceding to demands of farm groups during the scheduled meeting with Central representatives. Let’s hope the voice of farmers is heard and the slogan of ‘Jai Kisan’ raised by the Shiromani Akali Dal while voting against the agriculture Bills and leaving the NDA resonates”(sic).