Patna, May 10: A gathering of farmers in Patna on Sunday decided to fight the bataidari ( sharecroppers’) Bill likely to be pushed by the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar.
The leaders, including some from the ruling Janata Dal- United ( JD- U), who participated in the meeting held under the aegis of Kisan Mahapanchayat, an umbrella organisation of farmers’ bodies, said the Nitish Kumar government had a hidden agenda behind the Bill. It will lead to strife in every village of Bihar, they said.
JD- U MP Rajiv Ranjan Singh aka Lalan Singh said the sharecroppers’ Bill was not dead and that Nitish wanted to implement it after the next elections based on the recommendations of the land reforms commission headed by D. Bandopadhyaya.
Nitish has time and again said his government had no intention to implement the Bandopadhyaya report.
“ The landowners and sharecroppers have been living peacefully for centuries but Nitish wants to give the ownership rights to the sharecroppers and create a division in society,” he said.
Singh added that there was no difference between the Rashtriya Janata Dal ( RJD) regime of Lalu Prasad and that of Nitish Kumar.
“ Like Lalu, Nitish, too, is resorting to gimmicks to gain cheap popularity,” Singh said. The MP, however, refused to divulge what action he proposed to take against the introduction of the Bill.
Digvijay Singh, an independent MP from Banka, pointed out that the Bandopadhyaya report which Nitish “ wanted to implement” had been dumped even by the Leftist government in West Bengal.
—Agencies