CHANDIGARH: Five-time Punjab Chief Minister and SAD patron Parkash Singh Badal on Monday called upon Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “show magnanimity” and immediately scrap the three farm laws “as a first step” towards the resolution of the serious crisis confronting the country today. “The scars of wounds already inflicted will take a long time to heal,” he said.
The former Chief Minister also demanded that “100% procurement of farmers’ produce be purchased at Minimum Support Price (fixed as per Swaminathan Formula, C2+50) and that this be made a statutory legal right of the farmer.” Badal also emphasised “the need for a liberal, secular democratic approach to solve all the problems facing the country”.
Badal said, “Consultation, conciliation and consensus are the foundation of any democracy. Consultative processes alone lead to consensus, and consensus alone is the recipe for avoiding confrontations like the one we see now between the government and the farmers.”
In a four-page letter to the Prime Minister released here this evening, Badal said, “The three Acts in question that have pushed the country into deep turmoil must be withdrawn without making the farmers and their families endure any more suffering in this biting cold. The issue does not concern farmers alone but affects the entire economic fabric of the country, as traders, businessmen, shopkeepers, arhtiyas and labour are also directly affected by it.”