Farmers’ bodies dismiss as ‘fake, plain bogus and trashy’ report on farm laws by SC-appointed panel

Vibha Sharma

New Delhi, March 22

A day after a member of the Supreme Court-appointed committee on farm laws, Anil Ghanawat released its report stating that “over 85.7 per cent farmers were in favour of the farm laws” repealed by the Narendra Modi government, the Samyukta Kisan Morcha and its leaders debunked it as “fake, plain bogus and trashy”.

According to the 92-page report released by Ghanawat, “the bilateral interactions of the committee with the stakeholders demonstrated that only 13.3 per cent of the stakeholders were not in favour of the three farm laws. Around 85.7 per cent of the farmer organisations representing around 3.3-crore farmers supported the laws”.

Claiming that the report was based on “fake data collected through online feedback,” Yadav questioned whether they met any protesting farmers as the umbrella body of protesting farmers, the SKM, boycotted the SCC.

Yadav said the committee got “19,027 responses to its online questionnaire of which only 5,451 of these were farmers and 12,496 non-farmers,” questioning “why have their responses been merged for analysis”.

Taking a jibe at Ghanwat, Yadav said “the nation must be grateful to Anil Ghanwat for releasing the SC appointed committee (SCC) report on farm laws. Or else we wouldn’t know how much nonsense the country was spared”.

“Did it try to meet protesting farmers, sitting out in the open, accessible to anyone? No….What did SCC do to listen to farmers’ grievances? Sample survey? No,” Yadav said in a point by point rebuttal on the report

“Only 5,451 of these are farmers; 12,496 are non-farmers. What’s the background of these farmers? Who are these other stakeholders? Why have their responses been merged for analysis? No answers. It’s embarrassing to see Profs Ashok Gulati and (Pramod Kumar) Joshi (the other two members) sign on such trashy stats.”

Releasing the report Ghanwat said they submitted the report to the Supreme Court on March 19, 2021. “We wrote letters to the apex court three times requesting it to release the report. But we did not get any response… The report today… has no relevance now after the laws are already withdrawn,” he said.

As per the report based on feedback received by the committee through its online portal, “one-third of the respondents did not support the farm laws and around two-thirds were in their favour”.

“The feedback received through e-mails also shows that a majority supported the farm laws. In view of this feedback, the committee recommends that a repeal or a long suspension would, therefore, be unfair to this ‘silent’ supporters,” the report stated.