US trade deal: Kharge, Rahul to meet leaders from five states for protest campaigns

New Delhi, Feb 19 (PTI) Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and former AICC chief Rahul Gandhi will on Friday meet party leaders from five states and a Union Territory as part of efforts to launch a targeted campaign against the India-US interim trade deal and its "adverse impact" on farmers, sources said.

The Congress brass will hold a meeting with leaders from Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Bihar to finalise the modalities of the campaign, they said.

Earlier this week, upping the ante against the government over the deal, Gandhi posed a string of questions to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and alleged that "we are witnessing a betrayal" of the country's farmers.

Gandhi, who has been attacking the BJP-led government and accusing it of a sell-out through the deal, has said the issue concerns the future of the country and asked whether India is allowing another nation to gain a long-term hold over its agriculture industry.

The Congress has alleged that Modi has "surrendered" before US President Donald Trump in agreeing to the deal, which, it claimed, will "devastate" the livelihoods of crores of farmers across states and sacrifice India’s energy security, digital sovereignty and economic self-reliance.

Slamming the Centre, the Congress has said trade agreements should not become a path to slavery by "sacrificing a country's sovereignty", and asserted that national interest cannot be mortgaged under the guise of a trade pact.

Last week, Gandhi had accused the government of cheating cotton farmers and textile exporters and said the agreement is likely to inflict serious damage on both sectors.

He had also claimed that the trade deal, which now favours Bangladesh through zero per cent tariffs, will either finish the textile sector or the cotton farming or both, and the entire country knows this. PTI