CM Amarinder Singh accuses SAD of trying to 'hijack' farmers' agitation in Punjab

Chandigarh (Punjab) [India], October 9 (ANI): Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Friday slammed Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) over the issue of new farm laws and accused the party of trying to "hijack" the farmers' agitation in the state.
In a press release, the Chief Minister said that Sukhbir should refrain from commenting on the farm laws till he gives satisfactory answers to three vital questions, the answers to which every single farmer of Punjab wanted to know.
"Why did Harsimrat Kaur Badal not oppose the Farm Ordinances when they were first approved by the Union Cabinet, of which she was then a member? Why did Sukhbir not support the state government at the all-party meeting he (Captain Amarinder) had convened to evolve a consensus against the blatantly anti-farmer legislations? Why did the Akalis boycott the Vidhan Sabha session in which the other parties (barring BJP) had voted in favour of the resolution on the agricultural laws?"
Captain Amarinder said he had been asking these questions of Sukhbir and Harsimrat for the past several weeks but the Akali leaders had been persistently ignoring them.
"It was clear the duo had no justification for their actions, which had brought the situation to such a pass, where the very survival of the farmers was at stake," he added.
On Sukhbir's talk about forming a national pro-farmer front with "like-minded parties", the Chief Minister quipped that the SAD had ostensibly already quit the coalition of `like-minded parties', whose only common interest was to ruin agriculture and appease the corporate honchos who were controlling them.
The Chief Minister said the fact was that having lost their face and political standing completely among the farmers of Punjab, the Akalis were now grasping at straws to brazen their way out of their sins.
"You did not back us when you should have, leading to the situation aggravating to this extent. The least you can do now is stop trying to undermine our efforts and to take over the farmers' protest to further their political interests," he said. (ANI)