The Opposition Congress, in its manifesto released on Tuesday, said they would “repeal all unjust laws and other anti-people laws passed by the BJP government within one year of coming to power.”
This comes in the backdrop of opposition from several civil society groups, apart from farmers and worker unions, to five laws: stringent “cow slaughter ban” law, “anti-conversion” law, amendments that effectively deregulated APMC markets, diluting land reforms to liberalise the ownership of agriculture land, and increasing the working hours from 8 to 12 on factory floors. All these were passed by the incumbent BJP government.
Despite demands to repeal them, the BJP government did not budge, prompting civil society, farmers, and worker unions to adopt resolutions to “defeat BJP”. They have demanded the opposition to commit to repeal these laws if they came to power.
While the Congress has committed itself to repealing “anti-farmer laws enacted by the BJP” and to withdrawing the amendment to Factories Act, there is no clarity on other contentious laws. Meanwhile, the JD(S) has mostly been silent on all the five laws.
“Recently at a farmers’ convention, KPCC president D.K. Shivakumar gave us an undertaking in writing that if the Congress came to power they would fulfil our charter of demands, which includes withdrawal of three laws. Of these, Congress has explicitly committed to only withdrawing amendments to the APMC Act and not the other two related to cow slaughter and land reforms. We expected the Congress to state explicitly that they will revoke these laws. The JD(S), which has also given us a written undertaking, not only supported dilution of land reforms in the legislature, they have also failed to let their stand known on any of these laws in their manifesto,” said farmers’ leader Badagalpura Nagendra, who is part of Samyukta Kisan Morcha.
Bahutva Karnataka, a coalition of progressive organisations, has argued that both cow laughter and anti-conversion legislations breach several principles of the Constitution, violate individual rights, and has potentially created a law and order issue in the State by encouraging vigilantism. “We need all the political parties, apart from the BJP who enacted these laws, to make their stand clear on these laws,” said Vinay Sreenivasa from Bahutva Karnataka.
However, a senior Congress leader said the party was caught in a ‘Catch-22’ situation as any “commitment to repeal communal laws” will play into the hands of BJP to help further “communally polarise” society. The leader pointed out that Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah has said on record several times that the party will repeal both if voted to power.
