Sharad Pawar slams NDA govt for farm laws

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar has said that the agriculture sector of the country cannot be run sitting in Delhi. Agriculture can’t be run by sitting in Delhi as it involves hard-working farmers in villages and a bigger responsibility for this subject lies with state governments. Talking to a news agency , Pawar on Tuesday criticised the Centre for excluding state governments and not consulting them on the three new contentious farm laws, which has triggered protests by farmers since the last one month.

Pawar also countered the charges by Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar, who has said that the NCP leader wanted to introduce the same legislation during the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government but couldn’t do so, owing to the political pressure. “I and Manmohan Singh also wanted to bring some reforms in the agriculture sector but not in the same way as the current dispensation did. That time the agriculture ministry held long deliberations on the proposed reforms with agriculture ministers of all states and experts of the sector,” Pawar said. “So, when a majority of agriculture ministers had some reservations, it was the duty of the central government and mine to take them in confidence and resolve their issues before moving ahead,” Pawar said.

Attacking the arrogance posed by the government while introducing the three farms law, Pawar said, “How can a government say in a democracy that it won’t listen or it won’t change its line? In a way, the government bulldozed these three bills.”Had the Centre consulted state governments and taken them in confidence, then such a situation wouldn’t have arisen, Pawar said.