NEW DELHI (CU)_India’s Foreign Ministry summoned United Kingdom’s High Commissioner on Tuesday (9 March) over “unwarranted and tendentious discussion” in the British Parliament regarding India’s agricultural reforms.
Three new agricultural laws introduced by the Indian government last year led to months of protests by hundreds of thousands of farmers, who say the laws will devastate their income and make them vulnerable to corporate greed.
However, a discussion among British lawmakers on Monday is what caused fury in New Delhi, and the South Asian nation has demanded the parliamentarians to stop interfering with India’s internal affairs.
Therefore, India’s foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla met with British High Commissioner Alexander Ellis, on Tuesday, and said that the debate at the British Parliament represented “a gross interference in the politics of another democratic country”.
“He [Shringla] advised that British MPs should refrain from practising vote bank politics by misrepresenting events, especially in relation to another fellow democracy,” the ministry said in a statement.
Meanwhile, in situation the state of Punjab, which has large diasporas in the UK, the US and Canada, has been particularly intense on account of the protests, with more than 100,000 demonstrators continuing to camp on the streets for more than 6 months.
The protests received global prominence, especially following climate activist Greta Thunberg’s and pop star Rihanna’s declaration of support for the movement earlier this year.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also expressed critical comments regarding the circumstances, which led to the Canadian High Commissioner being summoned and warned that the Prime Minister’s comments could cause serious damage to diplomatic ties between New Delhi and Ottawa.
Nevertheless, PM Trudeau remained steadfast on his stance, saying “Canada will always stand up for the right of peaceful protests anywhere around the world”.
