Ashok Gehlot called an emergency cabinet meeting on farm laws on Tuesday.
Rajasthan may soon become the second Congress-ruled state after Punjab to formally reject centre's contentious farm laws that cleared parliament last month amid unprecedented protests.
On Tuesday, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot called an emergency cabinet meeting over the issue, and said a special assembly session will be called soon where a bill to counter the laws is expected to be introduced.
"At the cabinet meeting, the likely impact of centre's new farm laws was discussed," the Chief Minister said in a tweet in Hindi last night after the meeting.
"The cabinet has decided that a special assembly session will be called soon to hold discussions on the issue to protect the interest of farmers. During the assembly session, after deliberations on the new laws, bills should be introduced to counter the laws," he underlined in another tweet.
Three contentious farm bills - Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020 and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill- are at the centre of a huge political storm; these were signed into laws on September 29 by President Ram Nath Kovind.
While critics say farmers will lose bargaining powers with the entry of private players into the agricultural sector and they won't get a minimum support price for their produce, the government has said the new laws will help small and marginal farmers.
On Tuesday, Punjab became the first state to formally counter the three laws. The state Assembly - in a matter of minutes - first approved a resolution against the centre's laws, and then introduced and cleared three bills - each of which is designed to counter one of the centre's laws.
One of the three counter-bills allows authorities to impose fine and a jail term of not less than three years on any individual who buys, or sells, wheat or paddy below the government-mandated MSP (minimum support price). Another prevents hoarding and black-marketing of food grains, while farmers with holdings of up to 2.5 acres are offered relief against their land being attached.
Last month, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi had asked states where the party was in power to bring in laws to overrule the ones passed by the centre.