Captain govt should issue cheques instead of ‘notices’ to cane growers: Harpal Cheema

Chandigarh, March 25 : Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has taken umbrage on the way state government had been going overboard by issuing notices to gag the voice of the cane growers up in arms against the non-payment of their whopping dues pending with certain private mill owners in the state.

Citing the recent example of government’s highhandedness highlighted through a news report published in a leading English Daily, the senior leader of AAP and LOP Harpal Cheema  , said in a statement, issued from party head quarters in Chandigarh here, that the notices served on the agitating farmers by Dhuri SDM in the area, was a dictatorial decision on part of the government that smacked of infringement in their right to free expression.

Cheema said that these draconian decisions showed the anti-farmer face of both the preceding governments changing hands in power by denying their rightful claim on the pending dues. He said the Captain-led government, like its predecessors, had flopped on living up to the aspirations of the people of the state, especial the farming fraternity, by betraying on their trusts.

Cheema lamented that the beleaguered farmers had been left to fend for themselves due to the anti-farmer policies of the erstwhile SAD-BJP government and now the ruling Congress government, which, too, had failed to take an urgent call on the serious agrarian crisis, leaving the hassled farmers to stage protests and dharnas to make the deaf dispensation hear their side of the story.

He accused the government of confounding the issue as a major chunk of the private mill owners in the state were either the kin of  influential leaders of both the SAD and Congress parties, or themselves, which, he said, were  running the show without an iota of fear of the law of the law.

Cheema demanded that the government should immediately review its dictatorial decision  and mull a rollback sooner than later failing which Aam Aadmi Party would be left with no choice by to ‘gherao’ the sub-divisional magistrate (SDM), adding that sugarcane growers were already over-stressed over non-payment of their arrears worth more than 80 crore were due from the private sugar mill owners in the state, thereby bringing a semblance of solace to the agitating farmers.