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After her party pulled out of the coalition at the Centre over farm bills, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Saturday hit out at the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which is led by the BJP, for taking a rigid stance on the pains and protests of Punjabis.
“If pain and protests of 3 crore Punjabis fail to melt the rigid stance of GoI, it is no longer the NDA envisioned by Vajpayee ji and Badal Sahab. An alliance that turns a deaf ear to its oldest ally and a blind eye to pleas of those who feed the nation is no longer in the interest of Punjab,” Harsimrat tweeted on Saturday after SAD quit NDA.
It is to mention that Harsimrat Kaur had earlier quit from the union cabinet as Food Processing Minister over the agriculture bills.
Days after quitting the union cabinet, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Saturday decided to pull out of the BJP-led NDA alliance over “Centre’s stubborn refusal to give statutory legislative guarantees to protect assured marketing of farmers crops on MSP”.
The decision was taken at the core committee meeting of SAD which was presided over by the SAD President Sukhbir Singh Badal. The meeting unanimously decided to pull out of the BJP-led NDA alliance. The decision came at the end of a meeting that lasted over three hours.
Apart from Centre’s stance on the agriculture bills, the party also talked of “its continued insensitivity to Punjabi and Sikh issues like not including the Punjabi language in the list of official languages in Jammu and Kashmir”.
The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020 were passed by Parliament on Sunday. A third bill relating to amendment in the Essential Commodities Act has also been passed by Parliament.
The Centre has said that the bills provide farmers the freedom to sell their produce everywhere.
