Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday warned the government against using conspiracies and coercion to break the farmers’ resolve as the entire country was supporting their cause and urged the peasants not to yield an inch.

After boycotting the presidential address to the joint session of Parliament and demonstrating in front of Mahatma Gandhi’s statue along with other Opposition MPs, Rahul told a media conference: “You cannot frighten the farmers by deployment of forces, arranging stone-pelting and hatching conspiracies to defame them. The entire country is standing with them. What is being done to the farmers is absolutely criminal. You are beating them, you are threatening them, you are bullying them, and you are trying to discredit them.”

Insisting that nothing except scrapping of the three new farm laws would solve the crisis, Rahul said: “The government needs to talk to the farmers. It needs to give a solution to the farmers and the only solution, as I have said again and again and again, is repealing these laws and throwing them into the waste-paper basket. The government must not think that the farmers will go home. My concern is that this situation is going to spread. We do not need this situation to spread; that will be bad for the country.”

Asked about the Red Fort fiasco during the tractor rally on Republic Day, the Congress leader said: “Who allowed those people to enter the Red Fort? Is it not the task of the home ministry to ensure nobody entered the Red Fort? Who is responsible? Ask the home minister what was the idea behind allowing them.”

In response to another question on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s silence on the farm protest, Rahul said: “As I have said in a speech in Kerala, this is the biggest transfer of wealth from the largest number of people to the smallest number of people. You have seen what happened during Covid. During Covid, the poor have got poorer and a handful of rich people, five-six rich people have just got richer and richer. This anger that you are seeing among the farmers, this is that anger that five people, seven people have everything, we have nothing. What belonged to us is also being snatched. Modi works for these five-six persons. He did note-bandi for them, GST for them. He is now destroying the farmers. What will he say?”

Rahul urged the farmers not to yield an inch and assured them that the entire Opposition was standing with them.

“So far, the farmers of every state haven’t fully understood the depth of the crisis. The Prime Minister must not presume this movement will end. This will spread to unemployed youths. This will cause huge damage. Scrap the laws now. This instability is not good for the country,” he said.