India's Parliament rushed through a bill on Monday to repeal the three contentious farm laws that sparked lengthy street protests by farmers.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to scrap the laws in a surprise about-turn last week following pressure from farmers who camped at the borders of the capital New Delhi.
The Farm Laws Repeal Bill 2021 was introduced by Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on the first day of the winter session and was passed without any discussion in both the Houses of Parliament.
The bill was tabled in the lower house, Lok Sabha, and approved within four minutes through a voice vote before being sent to the upper house, Rajya Sabha. It passed amid demands from opposition members to hold a discussion on the legislation.
India's President Ram Nath Kovind is expected to give his assent to the bill to become a law.
Opposition members in both houses protested against the bill and raised pro-farmer slogans.
Some members said the government was subverting the parliamentary processes by evading discussions on important legislation.
Last September, Parliament passed the three farm laws that mainly dealt with opening India’s agriculture sector to private companies.
It called the laws the “biggest reforms” in the history of the country, a claim contested by farmers who called them “black laws” and demanded their repeal.
Anshul Avijit, a spokesman for the Congress party, told The National that his party wanted to hold discussions on setting a minimum price that farmers would be paid for their produce.
“We wanted to discuss the MSP, which is a core issue of the farmers, and give them legal guarantees. They passed the laws without any discussion in the first place and they repealed it unilaterally without even discussing with the farmers,” he said.
“This government has been taking unilateral decisions and fundamentally subverting all forms of democracy and all parliamentary procedures."
Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party defended the hasty passage of the bill, saying the new legislation merely annulled the laws.
“There was no need for discussion as this was not an introduction of a bill but repealing of the bills already passed. There was a specific objective that did not require any debate,” R P Singh, a BJP spokesman, told The National.
