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Centre misled SC on farm laws: Cong
KT NEWS SERVICE. Dated: 1/14/2021 11:35:52 PM
NEW DELHI, Jan 13: The Congress on Wednesday blasted the Modi Government for misleading the Supreme Court in its affidavit on Monday that due consultations were made before bringing the three farm laws.
Its spokesman and senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi told an online press conference that this was an attempt to “prevaricate, distort, misrepresent and mislead” the court and the nation.
The government in its affidavit said it is being filed “for the purpose of dispelling the erroneous notion that the protesters have peddled that the Central government and Parliament never had any consultative process or examination of issues by any Committee before passing of the laws in question."
And, as examples of pre-legislative consultations, the government quotes a Guru Committee set up in 2000 as pre-consultation and it also circulated Draft Model Acts in 2003 and 2017 to the State governments among other things. The government claimed that the “legislations are not hurriedly made but are a result of two decades of deliberations.”
Singhvi said the affidavit exposes the government that not even perfunctory consultations were done. "Can you call it an elaborate consultative process? For a law that you bring in 2020, you refer to the model Acts of 2003 and 2017," he said, stressing that it is an open admission that no consultation was held in 2019 or 2020 before piloting the related Ordinances in June last year and the Bills in Parliament in September.
These laws, he said, were rammed down the throat of Parliament. “The government has attempted to fool all the people of India all the time by practising falsehoods on stilts. Unfortunately, they have not even spared the hon’ble Supreme Court.”
Singhvi said the model Acts were sent out to the states to adopt since the government was well aware of the serious lack of legislative competence in passing uniform all India Act. Moreover, he said: "The content of the model laws was also different from the three enactments as passed by Parliament without discussion. Circulation of the model Acts itself shows the Centre went beyond its competence to get the laws passed."