Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Sunday slammed the Central government for spreading misinformation about the state’s farmers with its grave and incorrect allegations of bonded labourers working in the fields.
The CM termed it yet another conspiracy to defame Punjab’s farmers, whom the Central government and the ruling BJP have been persistently trying to malign by dubbing them terrorists, urban naxals, goons etc, in a bid to derail their agitation against the Farm Laws.
He castigated the BJP-led government at the Centre over its unwarranted charges of farmers using people as bonded labourers in Punjab, trashing the Union Home Ministry’s letter of 17 March in this regard as a bundle of lies, aimed at undermining the farmers’ protest and denigrating the Congress government in the state.
A careful analysis of the whole episode reveals that highly sensitive information pertaining to national security regarding the arrest of some suspicious persons, apprehended by BSF from close to the volatile Indo-Pak border, has been unscrupulously twisted on baseless conjectures to malign and tarnish the farmer community, said the Chief Minister. This reality has been further substantiated by the fact that “a selective leakage of the contents of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) letter to some leading newspapers and media houses has been done without waiting for an appropriate response from the state government,” he added.
Asserting that his government and Punjab Police are totally competent and committed to safeguard the human rights of the poor and the downtrodden, Captain Amarinder said suitable action has already been initiated in each case and most of the persons are residing with their families. If anything comes to notice at any stage, a suitable legal action will be initiated against the culprits, he added.