On September 1, Anil Ghanwat, the president of Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana, a farmers’ union in Maharashtra, wrote a letter to the Chief...
On September 1, Anil Ghanwat, the president of Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana, a farmers’ union in Maharashtra, wrote a letter to the Chief Justice of India. In the letter, Ghanwat urged the highest authority of the court to release a report prepared by a committee he had been a part of earlier in the year.
The committee he mentioned in the letter, was constituted by the Supreme Court in January after it suspended the implementation of the three contentious farm laws passed by the government in 2020, which sparked off protests by thousands of farmers from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh that have continued to rage every since.
The Supreme Court suspended the laws, and tasked the four members appointed to the committee with assessing their impact. The government seemed to hope that the court’s actions might break the deadlock over the last.
But all the members were already known to support the controversial laws publicly. One of them recused himself from it following pushback from farmer groups. In March, what had become a three-member committee submitted a report with its findings.
Yet, nearly six months later the report remains hidden from the public as the court has not yet released it, nor issued any orders based on it....
