As farm protests continue, BJP feels the heat in Punjab, its leaders choose silence

AS DAYS pass by and the renewed farmers’ protest across Punjab and Haryana continue, Sunil Jakhar’s face is conspicuous by its absence at the barricades that the BJP-led Haryana government has erected to prevent Punjab farmers from crossing over in their march towards Delhi.

A popular face during the 2020-21 farmers’ protest against the three Central farm laws, when he was the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) president, Jakhar is now the Punjab BJP president, having hopped over in May 2022.

Punjab’s BJP leaders have so far maintained silence over the issue, as well as over the role of the Haryana government, led by the BJP. During the 2020 agitation against the farm laws, the then PPCC president had been the first to address a public meeting against the ordinance on the three farm laws, on June 5. The Fatehgarh Sahib rally was attended by all Punjab Congress MLAs. At another protest in Nawanshahr on June 29, 2020, where Jakhar and other Congress leaders had pulled a tractor with ropes, he had even declared that the farm laws were pro-corporate.

Underlining his leading role in the 2020-21 farmer protests, Jakhar had also written to then Haryana Governor V P Singh Badnore on September 22, 2020, complaining that the Haryana government had prevented a Punjab Youth Congress-led tractor march from Chandigarh to Delhi. When the Punjab Congress, between October 4 and October 6, 2020, followed up by holding a tractor march across the state to protest the farm laws, Jakhar was seen driving the tractor Rahul Gandhi rode, when he visited the state to join the protest.

When TheIndian Express approached Jakhar, he said, “I’ll give my response to the issue in a day or two. Let the talks happen.”

Sources said the state BJP leadership