The Congress party would extend full support to the farmers’ organisations call for ‘Bharat Bandh’—India-wide Shutdown on December 8. The farmers have given this call after the third round of talks since Nov 26 had failed to yield any result. Over all five rounds of talks have been held in the last two months.
On December 5 Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a high-level meeting with the Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomer before the meeting with the farmers’ outfits. Though the next round of talks is scheduled on December 9 the farmers are not very hopeful.
Various regional parties in Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Maharashtra, Bengal etc are openly siding with the farmers’ cause. The ruling Telangana Rashtriya Samiti of K Chandrashekhar Rao is the latest to support the Shutdown call.
Shiromani Akali Dal leaders have met Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday to muster support for the agitating farmers. The SAD patriarch and former Punjab CM Prakash Singh Badal is likely to hold a meeting of the regional parties within next two weeks. Thackeray is likely to attend it.
On the other hand the Congress party’s MPs from Punjab would stage sit- in in favour of the farmers and against the three recently enacted farm laws at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on December 7. Party leader Rahul Gandhi had openly called for the scrapping of these laws.
