A day after the Governor Arif Mohammed Khan denied consent for a special Assembly session to discuss the farm laws, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday said Kerala stands firmly with the protesting farmers and urged the Centre to accede to their demands and repeal the contentious laws.
Addressing an indefinite stir organised by farmer organisations at Palayam here, Mr. Vijayan said the support for the ongoing nationwide stir was growing. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) should not harbour any illusion that it could suppress it by dividing the people or through underhanded means, he said.
The BJP government was upholding the interests of the corporates and not that of the farmers, he said. Moreover, the stir was not confined to any particular region of the country. The slogans raised by the farmers represented the common demands of the nation as a whole. A crisis in the food sector would have dire consequences for Kerala, as the State was not self sufficient on many fronts, he said.
Attempts made by the government to suppress the struggle had collapsed, Mr. Vijayan pointed out. “An interesting feature of the ongoing stir is that it has united everyone. People who are not directly linked to the farm sector, including senior officials, eminent personalities and decorated citizens, have united to become a part of the struggle,” the Chief Minister said.
The local body elections in the State had prevented the State from actively joining the farmers’ stir, Mr. Vijayan said. Now that the elections were over, the State was becoming a part of it and expresses solidarity with the farmers, he said.
