'Crying croc tears': Harsimrat Kaur Badal slams Rahul Gandhi over farm laws

In a tweet, Badal said: "Before doing PC & crying croc tears at why Pbis being called Khalistanis, you @RahulGandhi should tell why ur grandmother used same words for Pbis, why your father got them slaughtered & why you labelled them as drug addicts? Once u come up with ans then only talk abt Pb farmers."

She slammed Rahul in another tweet saying: "Where was @RahulGandhi when farmers staged dharna in Pb? Whr was he when Bills were passed in Parl? 40 Cong MPs were absent from proceedings in RS. His Pb CM is now hand in glove with BJP-led GoI. Does Rahul think fancy sympathetic words will wash off his complicity in crime?"

In September last year, Harsimrat Kaur Badal had resigned from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Cabinet over the Centre's take on farm sector bills.

Day's after her party Akali Dal, which had been an ally of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, parted ways amid growing backlash from its key voter base in Punjab,

Joining a protest against the farm laws in Delhi earlier in the day, Rahul Gandhi had said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not respect farmers and wants to tire out those protesting against the new laws.

"The three (farm) laws have been brought to finish the farmers. If we don't stop this now, it will continue to happen in other sectors too. Narendra Modi does not respect the farmers. The farmers will neither deter, nor fear," said Gandhi.

Thousands of farmers are camped in Delhi-Haryana border since the end of November with the sole demand of the repeal of the laws enacted by the central government through an Ordinance amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

One of the Centre's new farm laws will now allow farmers to sell their produce to institutional buyers beyond the regulated wholesale market.

Though the middlemen in the wholesale markets are often accused of usurping the farmers in the earlier agricultural system, the protesters, backed by several opposition parties, fear they will have little bargaining power while selling their produce to institutional buyers, running the risk of getting exploited with the gradual destablising of the mundies.