British Labour MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi on Thursday asked the United Kingdom’s Parliament to hold a debate on farm laws, saying that an online petition in this regard has gained over 1 lakh signatures. Online petitions require over a lakh signatures to be taken up for a debate in the Parliament, according to Outlook.
Dhesi said that over 100 MPs wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking his intervention in the farmers’ protests. “Well over 1,00,000 constituents have signed a petition, incredibly from every single one of the 650 UK constituencies, including more than 3,000 signatories from my Slough constituency,” he said.
Citing the online petition as well as the arrest of peaceful protestors and human rights activists, such as activist Nodeep Kaur, the British MP asked the Leader of the House to facilitate a debate on the matter. Kaur, a member of the Mazdoor Adhikar Sangathan, was arrested on January 12. She had participated in the farm law protests at Delhi’s borders and is charged under Section 307 (attempt to murder) as well as for extortion. The British MP also spoke about the allegations of sexual assault while she was in police custody.
While requesting for a debate, he pointed out that the House also took up a discussion on a similar matter, based on a petition last week.
Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg who spoke after Dhesi said the farmers’ protest was a matter of concern among constituents.
“As India is our friend, it is only right that we make representations when we think that things are happening that are not in the interest of the reputation of the country of which we are a friend,” Ress-Mogg said. “So I would say that the foreign secretary discussed the farmers’ protest with his Indian counterpart in December.”
Rees-Mogg said that the British government will follow the farmers’ protest closely, while respecting that “agriculture reforms is a domestic policy in issue in India”. The Conservative MP said that the British government will continue to champion human rights across the globe.
Many British MPs have expressed concern about the farmers’ protest in India. In December, 36 British MPs wrote to United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, urging him to raise their concerns with India on the farm law protests. The legislators had said that protests “are of particular concern to Sikhs in the UK” as many of them have family members and ancestral land in Punjab.
On Republic Day as farmers took out a tractor rally in India, their counterparts in the UK had posted images on social media to express their solidarity with them.
Tens of thousands of farmers, mostly from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, have been camping at Delhi’s border points for over two months, seeking the withdrawal of agricultural laws passed in September. The protests had largely been peaceful but violence erupted on January 26, when a tractor rally planned to coincide with Republic Day celebrations turned chaotic. More than 100 protestors have been arrested in connection with the violence and several are missing.
The farmers believe that the new laws undermine their livelihood and open the path for the corporate sector to dominate agricultural. The government, on the other hand, maintains that the new laws will give farmers more options in selling their produce, lead to better pricing, and free them from unfair monopolies. The laws are meant to overhaul antiquated procurement procedures and open up the market, the government has claimed.
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