Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Varun Gandhi on Saturday, 23 October, asked the central government to accept the farmers' demands, ANI reported. The farmers have been protesting against the three contentious agricultural laws since August 2020.
"Government should accept farmers' demands. I haven't done any corruption but there are leaders who take money from police, mining...I haven't taken my MP salary, government house... Public has given me power not to uplift myself but to uplift public and their issues," Varun Gandhi was quoted as saying by ANI.
He also took called for a rethink of the country's agricultural policy. The Lok Sabha MP from UP's Pilibhit took to social media to share a video of a farmer throwing kerosene on his paddy crop and setting it on fire after it remained unsold for 15 days.
"A farmer from Uttar Pradesh - Samodh Singh - was going from mandi (wholesale market) to mandi for 15 days trying to sell his crop. After failing to do so, in desperation, he burned his entire crop. What has this system reduced farmers to? We need to rethink our agriculture policy," Gandhi tweeted in Hindi.
On Thursday, 21 October, Gandhi criticised his own party's government in Uttar Pradesh, led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
"Much of the Terai is badly flooded. Donating dry rations by hand so that no family is hungry till this calamity ends. It's painful that when the common man needs the system the most, he's left to fend for himself. If every response is individual-led, then what does 'governance' mean," he had tweeted.
A week before, on Thursday, 14 October, Gandhi had also shared an old video of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee speaking on the farmers' movement in India in 1980.
That came just days after he was dropped from the party's National Executive after he intensified support for the farmers following the Lakhimpur Kheri incident in Uttar Pradesh, where four farmers were killed after being run over by a car belonging to a Union minister's son.
Maneka Gandhi, Varun's mother and a former Union minister, was also dropped from the National Executive.
(With inputs from NDTV)
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