The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Punjab on Saturday urged the Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh to guarantee procurement of all crops at the minimum support price (MSP) by bringing in its own laws to protect the interests of the farmers of the state, or step down as the CM.

It said the CM had forfeited his moral right to be on the august chair since Prime Minister Narendra Modi had rightly flatly refused a rollback on the black farm law.

Addressing a Press conference, AAP leader and legislator Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer said that PM Modi had refused to bow down to the mounting pressure from all quarters on the withdrawal of the black laws on agriculture, saying that the move would be detrimental to protect the farmers and the MSP on crops.

The AAP Member of Legislative Assembly said that in such a paradoxical situation, the onus of guaranteeing procurement of crops at MSP had now fallen upon the state government, adding that the government in the saddle must enact its own laws to ensure government procurement of all crops at MSP.

“There is no denying the fact that the sham Bills brought in by the Amarinder government in collusion with Modi were nothing a plain ‘jumla’ to take the people of Punjab, especially the farmers, for a ride,” he said.

The AAP leader further said that it was a clever move designed by the CM to derail the peasant struggle.

“The three black laws brought in by the Modi government, which were unanimously sans the BJP by the entire House in a resolution, the very next moment, the Amar inder government passed ‘sham’ amendments to all the three Central farm laws, making no alterations in the draft. It is quite evident that the amendments made by a state government to the Central laws are completely meaningless invalid unless or until they get Governors’ nod. The CM had played this card keeping the 2022 elections in view,” Hayer said.

He questioned the reason for Bills passed by the Punjab Assembly failing to make a mention of any crop other than wheat and paddy, while MSP should have been declared on a total of 23 crops, including cotton, maize and sunflower.

The Barnala legislator lamented that this was this callousness on the government towards the farmers that due to the non-procurement of cotton and maize crops in the mandis of Punjab, farmers were left with no choice but to sell their produce to private traders at a much lower price than the MSP.