The Supreme Court on Thursday deferred to January 11, the hearing on a batch of pleas challenging the constitutional validity of the three agricultural laws enacted due to legislative incompetence.
The bench of Chief Justice S.A. Bobde, Justices A.S. Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian said it would hear on Monday all the pleas challenging the new farm laws as also the ones raising issues related to the ongoing farmers protest.
The bench also took note of a petition which contended that the subject ‘agriculture’ has wrongly been put in the concurrent list in the Constitution by Parliament in 1954.
The petition was filed by P. Ayyakannu, State President of National South Indian River Interlinking Agriculturist Sangam, seeking a direction declaring the provisions of the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020, Farmers Produce Trade And Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020 as being unconstitutional, illegal and void.
It was submitted that the Act 20/2020 and 21/2020 are void and hit by Article 246(3) read with Article 301 to 307 of the Constitution of India due to legislative incompetence. Besides, all the two enactments are violative of Article 14, 19 (1) (g), 21 and 23 of the Constitution of India and accordingly, liable to be struck down as unconstitutional, illegal and void.
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The pleas of Rajya Sabha RJD MP Manoj Jha and DMK Rajya Sabha MP Tiruchi Siva, and one by Rakesh Vaishnav of Chhattisgarh Kisan Congress against the farm laws were also heard before the apex court. The top court proceeded to adjourn the case for January 11 to hear all the pleas related to this matter.