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The reason behind the protest is a request to repeal the recently passed
1. Farmers' (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act,
2. Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act
3. Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill.
- Acts have been passed by the Centre.
- However, agriculture remains a matter under the purview of the State List.
- The Centre has no jurisdiction to rule over agriculture even under the Concurrent List. These Acts lack a legal framework in the way that they came into existence. Additionally, the Acts deprive States of their revenue via any cess,
Therefore, these Acts are a challenge to the separation of powers which functions as the backbone to a democracy.
- Acts change all kinds of farming trade into digital contractual terms reveals how there is an attempt at selling the farmer's produce in a language that the farmer himself does not know
- This lack of skill, knowledge and expertise will provoke farmers into hiring middlemen, thereby, increasing the operational cost for the farmer
- Legally, all of this interferes with the freedom of a farmer to carry out his own trade under Article 19(1)(f).
- By imposing such fetters in the way that the farmer earns his livelihood, there is a threat under Article 21 as well.
- This will also deny a decent standard of living by interfering in the way that such a living' is earned by the farmer, impinging on Article 43 of the Directive Principles of State Policy.
There are problematic definitions within the Acts.
When these Acts define the term, “farmer", they exclude the cropper, labourer, tiller, etc- The impact of this is that certain persons involved in producing crop are systemically excluded from the purview of the Act
- Acts mandate trade to occur when the product is of a "mutually acceptable quality and standard."
- There is every possibility that the farmer might be pressured into over-using of chemicals, thus making it vulnerable to becoming barren.
No right to appeal- We must commemorate the access to justice accorded by the Constitution under Articles 14 and 21, at this juncture.
- Clearly, the Acts seem to defy the safeguards that the makers of the Constitution created it to stand for.
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