India’s parliament has passed two of three farms bills, the government says, will make it easier for farmers to sell their produce directly to big buyers, despite growing protest from opposition parties and a longtime ally of the governing party.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the passing of the farm bills in parliament was a “watershed moment in the history of Indian agriculture” as he hailed the laws cleared by the Rajya Sabha amid major chaos and drama.
Opposition parties moved a no-confidence motion against Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh Narayan Singh after he overruled opposition pleas for postponing Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar’s reply to the debate on the two farm bills till Monday as the scheduled sitting time of the House was over.
The two of the three bills passed today in Rajya Sabha – Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020, and Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020 – were cleared in Lok Sabha on September 17, Thursday.
These bills, after enactment, will replace ordinances promulgated on June 5, 2020.
The opposition and some farmer groups have raised questions about the pricing of their produce under contract farming. They have also raised concerns over disputes with big companies. The agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar clarified that farmers will have the power to fix the sale price of his choice and receive payments within three days.
The opposition by farmer groups in Punjab and Haryana, too, is primarily to the first ordinance that allows sale and purchase of crops to take place outside state government-regulated APMC (Agricultural Produce Market Committee) mandis.
In Haryana, the farmers emerged out of the outbacks and marched towards the urban belts on tractors and arranged peaceful sit-in at several state and national highway.
Several roads, including state and national highways, were blocked at different points across Haryana on Sunday in response to a call for statewide bandh by Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) to protest three farm Bills.
