Supreme Court Shows Concern over farmers' Protest

Supreme Court Shows Concern Towards Protesters, To Hear Pledge Against New Farm Law On Monday

On Wednesday the Supreme Court showed concern towards ongoing farmers’ protest. The protest has been going on for more than a month and the court announced that it will hear the petitions challenging the new farm laws and the ongoing agitation on January 11(Monday).

The bench of  court CJI SA Bobde, AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramaniam observed that "there is absolutely no improvement in the situation”  regarding farmers protest and stated that it will take up the petitions challenging farm laws on January 11. The observation was made by the SC as it took up a petition filed by advocate ML Sharma challenging the constitutional validity of the three farm laws. In his petition, ML Sharma has stated that the 1954 Amendment Act of the Constitution, which had included Agriculture in the Concurrent List of the Constitution, was passed in an improper manner. ML has argued that the inclusion of agriculture in the Concurrent list is unconstitutional.

Initially, the bench indicated that all rest matters related to the legal challenge to farm laws and ongoing farmer agitation will be taken up in court on Friday (January 8). However, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and Attorney General KK Venugopal objected for the same. Attorney General of India KK Venu Gopal informed the court that "there is good chance that parties may come to some conclusion in the near future," as another round of talks is scheduled for Friday. Moreover the SC bench then observed that it will like to take up the petitions challenging farm laws and other issues which are related to protest on Monday.

Counsel Tushar Mehta argued that since "healthy talks are going on between farmers and Centre, it would not be advisable to take up the matters immediately." This argument was backed by the AG, who argued that "filing of response in court by the Centre could foreclose avenues of negotiations underway between farmers and Centre." The SC bench finally scheduled a hearing of all pending matters related to the farm laws on January 11, Monday.