Farmers' Groups Slam Report on Farm Laws by Supreme Court as "False, Plain Bogus, and Trashy"

A day after Anil Ghanawat, a member of the Supreme Court-appointed farm laws committee, released a report claiming that "over 85.7 percent farmers were in favor of the farm laws" repealed by the Narendra Modi government, the Samyukta Kisan Morcha and its leaders dismissed it as "fake, plain bogus, and trashy."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 indicated that only 13.3 percent of the stakeholders were opposed to the three farm laws. The laws were approved by 85.7 percent of farmer groups representing around 3.3 crore farmers."

Yadav questioned whether they met any protesting farmers because the SKM, the umbrella body of protesting farmers, boycotted the SCC, claiming that the report was based on "fake data acquired through online feedback."

Yadav stated that the committee received "19,027 responses to its online questionnaire, of which only 5,451 were farmers and 12,496 were non-farmers," questioning, “why their responses were 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 attempt to meet with protesting farmers who were sitting out in the open, accessible to anyone?" No…. What did the SCC do to address farmers' concerns? Sample survey? No,” Yadav said in a point by point rebuttal on the report.

"Only 5,451 of these are farmers; the rest 12,496 are non-farmers. What is the background of these farmers? Who are these other stakeholders? Why were their responses merged for analysis? There were no answers. It's humiliating to watch Profs Ashok Gulati and (Pramod Kumar) Joshi (the other two members) endorse 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 has no relevance now after the laws are already withdrawn,” he said.

According to the report, based on feedback received by the committee through its online portal, "one-third of the respondents did not support the farm laws, while the other two-thirds favored them."

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