New Delhi: Congress president Sonia Gandhi has written a letter to Union transport and shipping minister Nitin Gadkari on the land bill and urged the Modi government to bring back the 2013 law in totality.
In her letter, Sonia Gandhi has slammed the land bill as an “unabashed display of half-truths”.
“I urge you to rise above the realm of narrow partisan politics and bring back the 2013 law in totality,” Sonia Gandhi has written in her letter.
Sonia said that “your proposed legislation makes a mockery of your claim that you stand for interest of farmers”.
“Your government is blatantly anti-farmer and anti-poor,” Sonia Gandhi said.
“Proposition of a post-facto debate after unilateral imposition of anti-farmer law is mockery of building partisan consesus,” the Congress president said replying in a strongly worded letter to Union Minister Nitin Gadkari.
Chiding the government for painting those opposing its land bill as anti-nationals, Gandhi asked the government to “rise above its narrow-minded politics”.
Hailing farmers as the “backbone” of the country, Gandhi said Congress cannot support any law which hurts farmers, and asked the Modi dispensation to bring back UPA’s land bill in totality.
Gandhi said it was regrettable that anyone championing the cause of distressed farmers and needy farm labourers was being branded as “anti-national” by a “myopic Modi government bending backwards to favour select industrialists”.
She said the fundamental difference between the Congress and the BJP is in understanding farmer’s distress and loss of livelihood by acquisition of land without safeguards.
Being pro-farmer does not mean anti-growth, she said.
Faced with stiff opposition on the land bill, the Modi government had on March 19 reached out to leaders of opposition parties, including Sonia Gandhi, and activist Anna Hazare inviting them to an open debate on the issue while asserting that the bill was “very much in farmers’ interest”.
In a letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, leaders of other opposition parties and social activist Anna Hazare, Union transport and shipping minister Nitin Gadkari said the government was willing to debate all aspects of the bill which is awaiting clearance in the Rajya Sabha.
