Opposition to land pooling increases as support remains limited to AAP leadership
There are no organic voices yet from urban areas supporting the policy.
Unlike the farm protest at Shambhu border, which led to the blockade of the vital National Highway 44 for close to a year, and where there were voices from trade, industry, and urban areas for lifting the blockade, there are no such voices from urban areas speaking in support of the land pooling scheme. The crackdown on the protest at the Shambhu border helped the ruling party get support from trade and industry sectors, and this became evident during the Ludhiana West byelection.
Even when it comes to community, caste, social and economic levels, no section has yet started speaking out in support of the policy. There are quite a few videos that have been widely shared on Punjabi social media space, in which farmers have issued warnings to AAP supporters to face serious physical consequences if they come to their villages to explain the policy.
BKU (Doaba) president Manjit Singh Rai, whose land is coming under the land pooling policy in Hoshiarpur district, publicly said he would not let anybody entering his land escape unscathed.
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A similar warning has been given by farmers from villages near Jalandhar.
With opposition to the policy now becoming 'political correctness' among farmers, AAP may face an uphill task in getting farmers who can publicly speak in support of the scheme.
From the govt side, along with chief minister Bhagwant Mann, ministers Aman Arora, Harpal Cheema, Hardeep Singh Mundian, Sanjeev Arora, and MP Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer have defended the policy.
A few office bearers have also given interviews to a few YouTube channels to defend the policy.
However, most of the MLAs or constituency in-charges, whose constituencies have areas coming under the land pooling policy, have confined themselves to sharing the party's pro-policy statements or videos, instead of giving their own statements or going to the villages whose land is covered under the scheme.
These were mainly the rural areas of Punjab which provided the greatest push to the urban-centric AAP in the 2014 parliamentart election, due to the peculiar political situation in the state. In the 2022 assembly elections, the party swept equally in rural and urban areas. Now, with farm groups, opposition parties, Punjabi activists, and netizens pushing the counter-narrative across rural Punjab, much beyond the villages whose land is coming under it, the task for AAP is getting tougher.
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