The Shiromani Akali Dal on Saturday pulled out of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, after sharp differences between the two parties over the three controversial farm bills. Cabinet minister and Shiromani Akali Dal leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal had quit her central post on September 18.
Shiromani Akali Dal President Sukhbir Singh Badal said the party quit the NDA because of the Centre’s “stubborn refusal to give statutory legislative guarantees to protect assured marketing of farmers crops on minimum support price and its continued insensitivity to Punjabi and Sikh issues”. Badal had earlier this week said that the party was reconsidering its ties with the BJP.
The minimum support price, or MSP, is the rate at which the government buys crops from farmers and is based on a calculation of at least one-and-a-half times the cost of production.