Members of the large farmers platform, the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) have appealed to farmers to vote out the BJP. Farmer leaders from Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Karnataka, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and other States urged farmers of North Karnataka to “punish the BJP” as it followed anti-farmer policies all through its tenure.
They made the appeal at a press conference in Hubballi, Karnataka on Sunday.
At the press meet, Badagalpura Nagendra and T.N. Prakash Kammardi said: “We are here to appeal to the farming community to vote against the BJP in the elections to be held on May 7. We urge farmers, labour, women and the common man to teach a lesson to the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections.”
“The BJP-led NDA government at the Centre has followed anti-farmer policies, whether it be about land acquisition, contract farming, land revenue reforms, privatisation of APMCs, failing to legalise MSP and taking away land of tribal people and small farmers to be distributed to industries at throwaway prices, denying the implementation of the Swaminathan report and other anti-farmer initiatives,” they said.
Leaders Sunilam and Suresh Kauth said that the Modi government tried to crush the farmers agitation and had tortured farmers who had arrived from across the country, in Delhi.
“As many as 752 farmers died during the agitation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is going around talking about the Congress planning to take away the mangalsutra of women, did not seem to be bothered about the mangalsutra of the wives of these farmers,” they said.
“Mr. Modi often chants the mantra of doubling farm income, but what he has done instead is to double the expenses of farmers. He has hiked the prices of seeds, fertilisers and agri-equipment by taxation and wrong policies. He promised empowerment of the poor but profited the rich instead. When we spoke of our rights, he adopted lathi-cracy shunning democracy,” they said.
Vijoo Krishnan and Avatar Singh Mehma asserted that agricultural crisis has worsened in the last 10 years with the suicide of over 1.74 lakh farmers across the nation. He said that the real number was even bigger as the NCRB did not add the suicides by landless labour, women farmers and tribals.
Balakrishnan and Rayala Chandrashekhar said that when the country was gasping for breath during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Union government passed anti-farmer laws that would have presented the entire farm sector to the corporate companies on a silver platter.
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‘Kisan Mahapanchyat’ to be held outside Parliament on March 20: Samyukta Kisan Morcha