Team News Riveting
When Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh advised the Akali icons to quit the BJP-led NDA over farmer issues, he did not anticipate the response would be so quick.
Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur yesterday resigned from the Narendra Modi cabinet, signalling her party would probably desert the NDA soon. She took the decision to oppose the Centre’s farm bills, which have triggered farmers’ protests across the agrarian states Punjab and Haryana.
The state unit of the Akali Dal has been supporting the farmers’ protests. Earlier this week, SAD president Sukhbir Badal had said, “Every Akali is a farmer, and every farmer is an Akali,” the same line Harsimrat copied in her resignation letter.
Interestingly, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh has been taking a dig at the Akalis. A rival of the Badals in Punjab politics, he had asked Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Sukhbir Badal to quit the BJP-led NDA.
The Congress leaders in the state could now claim that Harsimrat Kaur’s resignation and Akali Dal deserting the NDA were only because of pressure from Amarinder Singh.
The bills seek to provide barrier-free trade for farmers’ produce outside notified farm mandis, and empower farmers to enter into farming agreements with private players prior to production for sale of agri-produce. However, protesting farmers claim that the move will ‘corporatise’ the agriculture sector and further cripple them financially.
Rather than protest, Akali Dal’s move is political. The state polls in Punjab is just 18 months away and the farmers’ issue has direct impact in the local politics. Though Akali Dal is NDA’s oldest ally, its relation with the BJP has been in hitches many times.
Politically, the SAD has been in a spot over the last few years. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the BJP-SAD alliance managed to win just four of the 13 seats in Punjab. SAD won just two of those seats. The drubbing came two years after the party managed to win just 15 of Punjab’s 117 Assembly seats in the state polls – leading to a loss of power after two terms.
While Akali thought BJP’s alliance had played spoilsport, the latter felt it could have performed better had it been alone in the fray.
