Amarinder accuses Centre of encroaching upon rights of States

Punjab CM crticises govt.’s ‘one-sided’ decision to impose farm laws and DBT

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Monday hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Central government, accusing it of encroaching upon the rights of the States by its one-sided decision to impose the recent farm laws and the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) on the State’s farming community. “States never faced such problems earlier,” he said, accusing the Centre of trying to destroy the existing relations and systems — which had worked well for over a century — in the name of so-called reforms, which they were trying to impose without taking the stakeholders into confidence. “Punjab’s farmers and commission agent (arhtiyas) have age-old cordial ties, which the Centre was hell bent on damaging,” he said, terming the Government of India’s tough posturing and ill-conceived decisions as being against the basic spirit of federalism.