BURDWAN: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee Tuesday alleged that the Centre’s farm laws are meant to help a few businessmen like the Adanis who are its friends.
These businessmen are BJP capitalists and once the three farm laws are introduced, they will try to forcibly purchase crops from the farmers, she said at a programme here.
Banerjee, who is also the TMC supremo, asked farmers not to be scared and assured them that she will not allow anyone to torture them.
“BJP has a few friends like the Adani babus who are crorepatis, zamindars and capitalists. They are big big BJP capitalists who will forcibly purchase crops from the farmers and store them in big godowns already built in Delhi. And when people will need the crops they will not give them,” she said inaugurating ‘Mati Utsav’ here.
“This is the reason farmers from UP, Haryana, Punjab are protesting against the farm laws, she said.
Assuring the cultivators of her and her party’s support, Banerjee said I have spoken to them over phone four/five times. I had also sent my representatives there (protest sites) to talk to them. I want to clearly say that till we are alive we will not allow any kind of torture of the farmers.
I want to purchase crops directly from farmers. Don’t be worried, you (farmers) are the pride of the nation, Banerjee, a strident critic of BJP, said.
She alleged that the Centre is depriving cultivators in West Bengal by not purchasing the amount of paddy from them as it is from those in Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab.
Elaborating, she said the Centre has purchased only 76,000 tonnes of paddy from farmers of West Bengal though they had produced 2.5 crore tonnes of the crop.
“This shows how much the Centre has deprived the farmers of West Bengal, she said adding that the state government has purchased 49 lakh tonnes of paddy from them.
In West Bengal at least 73 lakh of farmers will be brought under the state government’s Krishak Bandhu scheme and 55 lakh have been already enrolled under it, she said.
The scheme was launched by Banerjee in January 2019. It will provide assured income and death benefits to farmers