A large number of farmers on Tuesday squatted at the gates of the district headquarters in Karnal, locked in a showdown with Haryana's Bharatiya Janata Party-led government over a police lathi-charge last month.
SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal announced the decision to snap ties with the NDA on Saturday night, amid stepped up agitation by farmers in Punjab over the three legislations which were recently passed by Parliament amid Opposition protests.
He again assured farmers that the existing government support system for them will continue.
Referring to Modi, Adityanath and Union Home Minister Amit Shah as 'outsiders', the farmer leader said he has no objection if they become prime ministers after winning polls from Uttarakhand or Gujarat.
'The Galwan crisis involves the security of the nation, can't we spend eight hours on that?' 'Why are you scared? Why are you running away from that?
At a press conference after a meeting of the party's senior leaders, K C Venugopal said the Congress will also launch a massive signature campaign in which it aims to collect two crore signatures from farmers and the poor people against farm bills.
This crisis requires political sophistication and governance skills. This BJP has neither, observes Shekhar Gupta.
'They will somehow survive the pandemic, but if these laws are not amended for the benefit of farmers, or is not scrapped altogether, they will surely die of penury and exploitation.'
A political slugfest broke out on Wednesday between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cavalcade, in a major security breach, got stranded on a flyover, 30 km away from Hussainiwala in Punjab, as a group of protesting farmers blocked his route.
The finance ministry has asked Infosys to provide within 15 days a plan for quick resolution of glitches on the GSTN portal, as it took strong note of the "unresolved" problems and "tardy" progress made over the last two years on multiple issues faced by taxpayers in filing returns. On Saturday, the revenue secretary A B P Pandey held a meeting with top Infosys officials on the persistent glitches seen on the GST network, and decided to ask Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani to make an urgent presentation before the GST Council on March 14.
Asserting that the agitation against the Centre's farm laws is a people's movement that will not fail, Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Rakesh Tikait on Sunday said there will be no 'ghar wapsi' till protesting farmers' demands are met.
'There is nothing more this government can do now to break our agitation.' 'It has used all the tactics and has failed'
Mandeep Punia was arrested from the Singhu border on Sunday for allegedly misbehaving with the police personnel on duty at the farmers' protest site there, officials said.
Sidhu, who had been at loggerheads with Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, had stayed away from all Congress activities ever since he resigned as cabinet minister last year.
The Congress Working Committee, the highest decision making body of the grand old party, passed a resolution to this effect. The CWC, chaired by Sonia Gandhi earlier discussed the issue along with that of the farmers' agitation and the COVID-19 vaccination drive and passed three resolutions on each of them.
The government's negotiations with protesting farm unions hit a roadblock on Friday as the farmer leaders stuck to their demands for a complete repeal of three farm laws they find pro-corporate and a legal guarantee for minimum support price (MSP), even as the Centre asked them to reconsider its proposal for putting the Acts on hold for 12-18 months.
Addressing a press conference in Patna, All India Congress Committee general secretary Randeep Singh Surjewala said the party would like the Central Bureau of Investigation to complete its inquiry in three months and favoured setting up of a special court to facilitate expeditious trial.
Hundreds of farmers, chiefly from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, continue to encamp Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur border points of Delhi despite "a few" of them being removed after testing positive for COVID-19 and some symptomatic protesters undergoing medication.
"You take any section of society be it Dalits, weavers or Brahmins, everybody has been exploited. The administration of Yogi Adityanath ji is working completely against the 'vichaar' (thoughts) of Guru Gorakhnath," she said at a rally, taking a swipe at the BJP leader who is also the head of the prominent Mutt in Gorakhpur named after Saint Gorakhnath.
Since a Supreme Court-appointed panel on farm laws is likely to hold its first meeting on January 19, the meeting on Friday between with the government and the unions may be the last one.
'It doesn't take much time for people's perception to change about a person.' 'People come and go based on people's will.' 'Nobody should forget that.'
'BJP ministers in Chhattisgarh were arrogant'
The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered a stay of the implementation of the contentious three new farm laws hoping this will end the prolonged protests by the farmers and also constituted a four-member panel of agri experts to resolve the impasse between their leaders and the Centre.
According to them, these marches were a "rehearsal" for their proposed January 26 "Kisan Parade" to the national capital from different parts of Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.
'Legally, anything can be promised in the manifestos. However, the SC has said the promises should not be unreasonable'
Yogendra Yadav said the decision to defer the march was taken over a forecast of bad weather conditions on Wednesday.
Farmers protesting the Centre's three farm laws on Saturday blocked the six-lane Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) Expressway at some places in Haryana to mark the completion of 100 days of their agitation at the Delhi borders.
Expect Modi to speak about internal security, terrorism, agriculture, the Triple Talaq Bill, the SC/ST Bill and, of course, the controversial NRC.
'If the government wants to see our strength, we will show them'
British lawmakers will debate the issue of press freedom and safety of protesters in India next Monday in response to an e-petition which had crossed the 100,000-signature threshold required for such a debate, the House of Commons Petitions Committee confirmed on Wednesday.
Extended rounds of negotiations having failed, farm leaders now reckon that their best chance to pressure the government lay in defeating the BJP in the coming assembly poll, particularly in UP, observes Virendra Kapoor.
Is the Budget sufficiently prudent? It probably is but at the cost of substantial under-provisioning for the many grand sounding schemes announced in it, says Nitin Desai.
Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Wednesday said the government will continue with reforms in the farm sector as they are still due in many areas, even as he reiterated his hope that protesting farmers will soon come forward to resume their dialogue with the Centre to resolve their concerns over three new laws.
V Singh said that "actual farmers are very happy with what has been done in last six months."
Svaiman Singh, one of the doctors in the team, said they set up medical camps at Tikri nearly 20 days back and have been attending to the sick farmers since then.
With farmers on Thursday blocking railway tracks across the country, at stations big and small, protesters at Singhu said it proves that the agitation is not just limited to Punjab and Haryana.
Modi also appealed to farmers not to burn crop residues so as to curb pollution.
Bajaj Auto was the top gainer in the Sensex pack, surging 3.95 per cent followed by Maruti Suzuki at 2.69 per cent.
The number of protesters swelled at Delhi border points on Wednesday. Police stepped up security after thousands blocked key gateways into the national capital for the seventh day on the trot, leaving commuters facing a harrowing time.
British Parliament's Petitions Committee will consider a Westminster Hall debate in the House of Commons complex on the issue of farmers protests and press freedom in India after an online petition attracted over 106,000 signatures.
