Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi will lead a delegation of the party’s Members of Parliament (MPs) to Rashtrapati Bhavan on December 24 and hand over around two crore signatures against the three farm laws to President Ram Nath Kovind and would request him to annul the farm laws.
In a statement, party general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal said, “....the Congress party had launched a nationwide campaign for collecting memoranda of appeals addressed to the Honourable President of India signed by farmers, farm labourers and other stakeholders opposing these legislations right from the initial stage of introduction of these Bills in the Parliament. Around 2 crore signatures, urging the intervention of Hon’ble Rashtrapati ji for withdrawal of the three legislations, have been collected till now,” he said.
Mr. Venugopal also accused the Narendra Modi government of using various tactics to discredit the farmers’ movement: from tiring out the farmers to labelling Opposition leaders as anti-national.
He also noted that the government’s “refusal” to listen to the demands of the farmers has resulted in the death of 44 farmers.
“It has become absolutely clear that the Modi government is only committed to the welfare of large corporates instead of innocent farmers and farm labour. The government has also been on an overdrive using public money to create false propaganda and narrative in favour of the legislation and discrediting the protesting farmers. It is pushing manufactured surveys in media discourse to create support in favour of these anti-farmer laws,” Mr. Venugopal said.
