APCC president S. Sailajanath launched the ‘Two crore signature campaign’ here on Thursday to mobilise support against the three farm Acts enacted by Parliament recently.
“We will meet the President on November 14 in New Delhi after gathering the signatures from across the country and request him to intervene in getting the legislations repealed. These Acts will work against the interests of the farmers as the Minimum Support Price is being done away with,” Dr. Sailajanath told reporters while launching the campaign here.
‘Corporates will gain’
The Congress government had introduced the MSP to protect the rights of the farmers seven decades ago, but the BJP government was implementing the RSS agenda by handing over the entire farming activity to the corporates on a platter, he said, and added that the farmers would be forced to grow only what these companies wanted at a price fixed by them.
“The BJP has handed over the Railways partially to the corporates,” he alleged. With regard to the MSP too, the Centre was following the Bihar model, where MSP was done away with 15 years ago, Dr. Sailajanath said.
Power meters
Criticising the YSRCP government for deciding to go ahead with the its plan to fix power meters for agriculture connections, Dr. Sailajanath asked Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy to shelve the proposal.
“Let the Chief Minister first tour Kurnool and Anantapur districts, where farmers have lost groundnut and cotton crops in a big way. They farmers should immediately be compensated,” he said.
Dr. Sailajanath further demanded that additional input subsidy be given immediately to all the farmers who had lost their crops, besides paying them the input subsidy dues the previous government had kept pending since 2018.
