SAD leader condemns `police action' on workers protesting farm Acts

Chandigarh (Punjab) [India], October 2 (ANI): Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Bikram Singh Majithia on Friday alleged "police repression" against peacefully assembled Akali workers on the outskirts of the city who were protesting the recently passed farm laws.
"It seemed like the Congress government in Punjab and the Centre had played a fixed match yesterday with the intention of derailing the peaceful protests. If the Centre feels it can silence us by conducting a brutal lathi charge against us, it has still not understood the deep sense of anguish of the farmers of Punjab. We will continue to agitate and will not be cowed down by such high handedness," the former minister said in a statement.
Majithia said he along with a group of other leaders courted arrest at Mullanpur and were led to a bus "where police personnel attacked them brutally without any provocation which led to Prof Prem Singh Chandumajra and Gulzar Singh Ranike being injured".
He added that in a similar protest at Zirakpur, senior leader and MP Balwinder Singh Bhundur "was manhandled by the police".
He also attacked Congress saying "it is too much of a coincidence" that Rahul and Congress President Sonia Gandhi left for the United States for a routine medical checkup one day before the tabling of the agricultural bills in parliament and returned back on the day they were passed.
"Rahul should also explain why he supported the abolition of the APMC Act and the `mandikaran' system in 2019," Majithia said. (ANI)