The Congress candidate for Gurdaspur bypoll, Sunil Jakhar on Tuesday accused the Union government of initiating anti-farmer policies. He claimed the Union government’s decision to impose Goods and Service Tax (GST) on agricultural tools and other similar measures had further broken the backbone of the beleaguered farmers of the state.

Addressing a series of worker meetings in Sujanpur (Pathankot) on Tuesday, Jakhar claimed the Union government had aggravated their woes with its anti-farmer and anti-poor policies. He also flayed Union Finance minister Arun Jaitley for imposing GST even on wheat flour. He accused the Prime Minister Narendra Modi led government of promoting the interests of corporates only.

“The Akalis failed to approach the Central government for waiver of farm loans. The state government had always worked to safeguard the interests of the Punjab farmers. The state government is also working to make agriculture remunerative in order to bring the farmers out of the agrarian crisis,” he said.

Referring to the SYL issue, Jakhar said it was Amarinder Singh, who brought the Punjab Termination of Water Agreements Act, 2004 and later also took a strong stand against allowing even a single drop of Punjab’s waters to go out of the state. Jakhar also hit out at the Central government on the issue of demonetisation which allegedly had derailed the country’s economy.

“No one gained from demonetisation. Around 200 lives were lost because of this ill-conceived decision and reports suggest that the impact of demonetisation will continue for three more years,” alleged Jakhar.

Pointing out that Rs 16 lakh Crore had come back into the banks though Rs 15 lakh Crore was in circulation, Jakhar said this implied that counterfeit currency had also been accepted. He demanded to know the Central government’s stand on the issue of “Black Money” and fake currency now.

Jakhar further alleged that the Union government had failed to implement its promise to provide two Crore jobs, with the employment exchange data revealing that every month 10 lakh unemployed youth are getting themselves registered, which means 1.2 Crore annually. In contrast, an average of a mere 1.5 lakh jobs has been provided in the past three years, he added.