Chandigarh, November 3:
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Thursday came down heavily on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for defaming the farmers of Punjab over the farm fire incidents in the state even this time there is a significant slump in these cases as compared to previous years due to concrete steps have been taken by the Punjab government under the leadership of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann.
Addressing a press conference here at the party’s headquarter, Chief spokesperson of the party Malvinder Singh Kang said that BJP is trying to divert the attention of people from Gujarat Morbi bridge tragedy by defemaming the farmers of Punjab and blaming them for rising pollution in the country.
He said that BJP is doing vendetta politics to take vengeance from farmers for coercing the centre to repeal the draconian three-farm laws last year. Due to this, BJP Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has also levelled baseless accusations against the Punjab and its farmers.
Presenting the data of north India with a poor Air Quality Index (AQI), Kang said that only three cities of Punjab figure in 32 cities while Haryana has over 9 cities in this list, which is the highest numbers of any state across the country. Despite this, BJP and Centre have unleashed slanderous campaigns against hard working and resilient farmers of the state by squarely blaming them for environmental hazards.
Kang said that BJP should clear its stand that why their leaders are silent over far more worst AQI in Faridabad, Manesar, Gurgaon, Sonipat, Gwalior, Indore and other states where the saffron party is in power. He also dared Haryana CM to tell the people what he has done to ameliorate the situation of pollution in the state and how many stubble residues machines had been distributed among farmers to tackle stubble burning cases.
Kang lashed out at BJP and said that the CM Mann had submitted a solution for the paddy straw burning by offering to jointly pay financial assistance to farmers worth Rs 2500 in lieu of not burning paddy straw. However, he said that instead of accepting this proposal the centre had blatantly refused to bail out the farmers.
He said that due to sincere efforts of Punjab CM to safeguard the environment, Punjab has covered 31.44 lakh hectare area under paddy this time while Haryana has only 13.90 lakh hectare, still pollution level is rising in the BJP ruling state. This is because the Mann government has given 35,583 crop residue management machines to farmers in 2022-23 against which was triple time higher than 13,796 machines distributed in 2021-22 by the Congress government.
He also cornered the BJP government for pressurizing the officers to register FIRs against farmers for burning stubble through National Green Tribunal and said that this has exposed the double standards and anti-farmers stand of BJP before farmers and people of the country.
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