Farmers say they are disappointed
New Delhi: A day after it hinted to that direction, the three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, comprising the Chief Justice of India, SA Bobde, and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian today stayed the implementation of all three farm laws and appointed a committee to examine farm laws. The committee comprises of HS Mann, Pramod Kumar Joshi, Ashok Gulati and Anil Dhanwant. The court was passing order on a clutch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the laws.
The court said the committee would submit a report to the court and also sought cooperation of the farmers’ unions to cooperate with the committee so as to solve the issue.
“We are looking to solve the problem. If you (farmers) want to agitate indefinitely, you can do so,” the court said.
However, following today’s verdict, Rakesh Tikait, a prominent leader of the agitating Sanyukt Kisan Morcha stated that while the farmers thank the Supreme Court for taking a positive stand in favour of the farmers, he said the farmers were disappointed with the Court’s choice of the members of the Committee and claimed that all these members had been the supporters either of the new laws or the open market system. “It was the committee under the chairmanship of Ashok Gulati only which had recommended to introduce these new legislations,” Tikait said and declared that their agitation will continue till these acts were repealed by the government and enacted a new MSP law.
“We will further examine the Supreme Court order and then decide on our next course of action,” Tikait said.
The CJI in the meantime also referred during today’s proceedings, to an application before the court regarding a banned organisation helping the protest, and asked the Attorney General KK Venugopal to file an affidavit in this regard tomorrow. The Attorney General told the court that “Khalistanis had infiltrated into the protests”.
– global bihari bureau
