Spokesperson: Shri Deepender Singh Hooda: He said that a very detailed report has come in Part 2 of the ‘Reporters Collective’ regarding the origin of the three agricultural laws, and today the country is asking many questions to this government.

First of all, it has been proved through this report that the government brought all the three agricultural laws to give benefits to a few rich people of the country.

In April 2016, a committee was set up under the leadership of Shri Ashok Dalwai, through the government, including representatives from various ministries. It was an official committee which worked in this context and eventually that committee submitted a 3,000-page report to the government in which many good suggestions were also made by this committee. But while this committee was working, a person named Sharad Marathe wrote a letter to the Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog, Shri Rajiv Kumar ji. In that letter, he mentioned that he wanted to propose a model for doubling income in the country and three companies should be formed in this model. A Farm Management Company, operating on 500 to 1000 acres of land and all the farmers from whom that land is taken would be given a partnership of 51 percent and the rest should be with the big industrialists.

Let the second company be formed, which would be a processing and packaging company, the farmer would have nothing to do with it and the third would be a marketing company, again the farmer would have nothing to do with it. While giving a proposal, he said that it will help a lot in doubling income and I want to demand from NITI Aayog to set up a task force regarding this proposal. Who is Sharad Marathe? He has nothing to do with agriculture sector.

This task force was formed after December 2017. The task force consulted handpicked big corporates such as Adani Group, Patanjali Ayurveda, Mahindra Group and Big Basket. Obviously, they presented everything from their own point of view and ultimately you saw that during Covid 3, agricultural laws were passed without any debate in the Parliament.

When the law came, instead of accepting the recommendations of the Inter-Ministerial Committee made by Ashok Dalwai ji, the recommendations of the Task Force made by Sharad Marathe jiwere accepted that there is no compulsion to buy at MSP.

The farmer has understood that the huge loss will be done to the farmer and that is why, we have 4 demands from the government:

1. When 3000-page report of Dalwai committee was already there, then why did BJP listen to a non-expert NRI industrialist, bypassing the rules? Why was a high-level task force formed by NITI Aayog to crush the rights of farmers so that only the elite can make profits?
2. After all, why is it so important for the BJP government to provide benefits to selected capitalists, due to which they conspired to sabotage the entire food system and agriculture sector of the country?
3. Why is this government behaving in such a hostile manner with the ‘Annadata’ of the country who feeds 140 crore Indian citizens?
4. Now, while ending the movement, the government had accepted the demands like forming the MSP committee, implementing the MSP in a time-bound manner and withdrawing these cases. How long is the timeline for completing the decisions taken in all these agreements? Today we ask these four questions to the government. Monday, August 21, 2023.