BJP to hold kisan panchayats

[related-post]

As part of the programme, Gadkari will be in Agra and Aligarh on April 7 for which the party’s local units have already started contacting farmers to mobilise them to attend the meeting. Before visiting UP, Gadkari will travel to Ranchi and address a seminar, “Significance of Land Acquisition Bill,” to drive home the party’s stand.

Significantly, the BJP’s ‘kisan panchayats’ will coincide with the Congress’ “padyatras” that the party will take out in several UP districts from April 9 to mobilise farmers “against” the land acquisition bill, thereby essentially pitting the two parties against each other in a face-off like situation over the bill and the farmers’ issues. During its “padyatras”, the Congress will appeal to the farmers to attend the party’s rally scheduled to take place in Delhi on April 19.

The BJP, on the other hand, will take its Kisan Panchayats to other states but not before it had held nearly 50 such panchayats in UP alone, according to party’s state Kisan Morcha president, Vijay Pal Tomar.

“We are preparing pamphlets and booklets describing the salient points of the proposed land acquisition bill and the pro-farmer decision that Central government has taken in the past 10 months. These booklets would be distributed among farmers at the panchayats,” he said.

Tomar alleged that the UP government was doing “injustice” with the farmers by making “wrong assessment of their crop loss and denying the incidents of farmers’ suicides”.

BJP national vice-president and chairman of party’s working group for agriculture, Satya Pal Malik told The Indian Express that the ministers and party leaders will touch upon various issues that will also include land acquisition bill. Malik said that farmers have not read the draft bill and hence the opposition parties were creating a propaganda against it.