MHA Says Punjab Farmers Give Drugs to Migrant Workers to Extract More Work, Union Slams Claim
The letter is being looked at by the protesting farmers as yet another salvo by the Narendra Modi government to malign them.
A labourer drinks water while harvesting wheat crop at a field in Jhanpur village of the northern Indian state of Punjab April 18, 2012. Photo: Reuters/Ajay Verma
Rights03/Apr/2021
New Delhi: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has dispatched a letter to the Punjab government, alleging that farmers in its border areas have been administering “drugs” to migrant and bonded workers to work in their fields in order to extract longer hours of work from them.
Farmers gherao the ADM’s office in Bhubaneswar on Monday
BHUBANESWAR: The All India Kishan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), an umbrella forum of several farmer outfits in the country on Monday staged demonstrations in front of the district collectors’ offices and other government offices across the state to protest against the Centre’s new farm laws.
The state leaders of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) also joined them and resorted to a hunger strike to show solidarity to the farmers’ movement in Delhi. The Left parties also opposed the farm laws, and supported the protest by the AIKSCC in the state.
BHUBANESWAR: BJP s farmer wing will organise farmer conventions at different places of the state protesting Odisha government s alleged apathetic attitude towards its farmers. It will raise the issues like distress sale of paddy, alleged irregularities in token system for paddy procurement at Mandi and harassing farmers during procurement.
BJP Krushak Morcha state president Pradip Purohit said they will hold farmer conventions (Chasi Samabesh) at six places in the state by end of this month. The conventions will be held at Cuttack on December 19, at Aska in Ganjam on December 20, at Jeypore on December 22, at Dhenkanal on December 23, at Balasore on December 24 and at Bargarh on December 26.
Farmer leaders on Friday criticised Union minister Pratap Chandra Sarangi’s statement that anti-national forces are behind the ongoing farmers’ agitation against the new farm laws.
Sarangi, the Union minister of state for animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries, had said earlier on Friday: “No one, neither the farmers nor their leaders, is above the law. The farmers have been instigated to organise the agitation. There is no ground for agitation. Anti-national forces are behind the agitation. These reforms are for the good of farmers.”
Soon after Sarangi made the statement at the BJP party office, state convener of the All India Kishan Sangharsh Coordination Committee, Suresh Panigrahi, termed Sarangi, who hails from Odisha, as anti-farmer.