The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) had on Saturday quit the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) over the farm bills issue.
Now the former ally of BJP - Shiv Sena - has appreciated the decision of the Shiromani Akali Dal today.
Reacting to the news, spokesperson of Shiv Sena Sanjay Raut said the "strong pillars of NDA" were Shiv Sena and Akali Dal and there can be no NDA without both the parties.
Taking to Twitter, Raut also said that Shiv Sena appreciates Akali Dal's decision to break its ties with NDA in the interest of farmers.
"The strong pillars of NDA were Shiv Sena and Akali Dal. The Shiv Sena was forced to exit the NDA, now the Akali Dal left. NDA has got new partners now, I wish them all the best. The alliance that does not have Shiv Sena and Akali Dal, I do not consider it NDA," Sanjay Raut was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
"Shiromani Akali Dal core committee decides unanimously to pull out of the BJP-led NDA because of the Centre’s stubborn refusal to give statutory legislative guarantees to protect assured marketing of crops on MSP (minimum support price) and its continued insensitivity to Punjabi and Sikh issues," party President Sukhbir Singh Badal said in a tweet.
Shiromani Akali Dal, one of BJP's oldest allies, has two members in Lok Sabha and three in Rajya Sabha. The party's lone nominee in the Cabinet, Harsimrat Kaur Badal had earlier resigned to protest against the bills, passed earlier this month.
Farmers, especially from Punjab, Haryana and parts of Uttar Pradesh, have been protesting against the bills claiming that they were a precursor to the scrapping of minimum support price scheme and would allow corporates to monopolise agriculture.
Punjab and Haryana are the biggest beneficiaries of government procurement of crops under the minimum support price mechanism.
Meanwhile, the SAD is the third major party to walk out of the BJP-led coalition in the last couple of years.
Shiv Sena walked out of the alliance last year. In 2019 assembly elections, Shiv Sena and BJP contested the polls as allies. However, after their disagreement over the power-sharing formula, Shiv Sena formed the government with the NCP and Congress as the new alliance partners.
(With inputs from agencies)
