Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Jan 22: The Congress has demanded immediate repeal of the three contentious farm laws and setting up of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe into the alleged leakage of national security issues as reflected from WhatsApp chats of the Republic TV editor Arnab Goswami.
The Congress Working Committee at its meeting on Friday also adopted a resolution thanking the Indian scientists and doctors for developing the Coronavirus vaccine in such a short period and urged the people to come forward for vaccination shaking off all hesitancy. It also announced to hold elections for the new party president by June 2021.
The party’s Central Election Authority headed by Madhusudan Mistry later said the Congress was set to announce the schedule for election of a new party president. He, however, did not say whether the leadership will be holding elections for the CWC, a demand made by the group of 23 leaders who had written to the interim president Sonia Gandhi a few months back. The stand the group of 23, who included prominent leaders like the leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad and noted advocate Kapil Sibbal, over participating in the presidential elections was also not clear.
The resolution on the farmers strike said the three farm laws hastily passed by the Narendra Modi government were detrimental to the Constitutional rights of states and the systems of MSP, Public Procurement and PDS. “The CWC demands that the Modi government should forthwith repeal the three anti-agriculture laws,” the resolution read.
The resolution noted that the laws did not pass the test of Parliamentary scrutiny as they were “bulldozed by muzzling the voice of the opposition”. “Particularly in Rajya Sabha, the three laws were passed by Voice Vote in an unprecedented fashion as the Government did not have the requisite majority on the floor,” it read.
According to the CWC, these laws, if implemented, would adversely affect all citizens as pricing of all food products would be at the mercy of a handful of people.
“There is only one demand of India’s farmers and farm labourers — repeal the three objectionable laws. But the Government continues to side-step, malign, deceive and hoodwink the farmers by attempting to tire out, intimidate and divide the farmers. Let the BJP Government understand one unequivocal truth – India’s farmers shall neither bow down, nor be cowed down,” the resolution read.
In her opening remarks, the interim president launched scathing attacks on the Modi government over a host of issues. She said there were “many pressing issues of public concern” that needed to be debated and discussed in the upcoming session of Parliament. She was particularly severe on the government on the indefinite agitation by the farmers as well as the security lapses on such sensitive issues like the Pulwama attack and Balakot strike.
On the ongoing farmers’ agitation, she said the government had shown “shocking insensitivity and arrogance going through the charade of consultations”.
“It is abundantly clear that the three laws were prepared in haste and Parliament was consciously denied an opportunity for examining in any meaningful details their implications and impacts. Our position has been very clear from the very beginning: we reject them categorically because they will destroy the foundations of food security that are based on the three pillars of MSP, public procurement and PDS,” she said.
On the purported WhatsApp conversations between Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami and former CEO of Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) Partho Dasgupta, Sonia Gandhi said there have been “very disturbing” reports on how national security was “thoroughly compromised”.
Referring to the former external affairs minister A K Anthony’s comments on the Goswami’s chats, Gandhi said “Just a few days back, Antony-ji had said that leaking of official secrets of military operations was treason. Yet, the silence from the government’s side on what has been revealed has been deafening. Those who give certificates of patriotism and nationalism to others now stand totally exposed,” she said.
Complimenting the Indian scientists and doctors on such speedy discovery of Covid vaccines, she said vaccination of frontline health workers had begun, and the Congress hoped the process would be completed “to the fullest extent”.
Hitting out at the government on handling the Covid pandemic, she said, “The government has inflicted untold suffering on the people of our country by the manner in which it has managed the Covid pandemic. It will take years for the scars to heal,” she said.
On the economy, Gandhi said the situation remained grim and large parts of the economy, like the MSME and informal sectors, had been “decimated”.
“When public expenditure has to be carefully prioritised, it is very painful to find huge amounts of money being allocated and spent on initiatives that can only be described as ‘personal vanity projects’. Equally anguishing was the manner in which the government had weakened labour and environmental laws and its moving ahead with selling off of carefully built-up public assets, she regretted. “Panic privatisation has gripped the government and this is something that the Congress party can never accept and support,” she said.
