Before Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to repeal the farm laws, the Opposition-ruled West Bengal, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Rajasthan and Kerala had rejected the implementation of these laws in their states. However, the Opposition in Maharashtra, which had given the anti-Modi movement further momentum by installing a tripartite Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government of the BJP’s pre-poll ally Shiv Sena, the Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress, took a different route altogether. Instead of rejecting them, the MVA decided to amend the Centre’s acts, which by then were suspended by the Supreme Court. The MVA ministers who spoke while tabling the amendments lashed out at the BJP government for having brought the farmers to such a stage of protest, yet they tried to convince the farmers why the reforms, amended in the way the MVA thought they should be, would only benefit those in Maharashtra and prove the Modi legislation anti-farmer. The bills were put in the public domain for a period of two months for feedback just ahead of the monsoon, for taking them up during the winter session of the state legislature.

The move invited the ire of the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), which has MVA’s smaller allies and the pro-MVA activists, who have been participating in the protests at the Delhi borders. The MVA’s decision was debunked by the committee, which questioned the logic. “The amendment bills introduced by the MVA government are a betrayal of the ongoing farmers’ movement about which each of the honourable ministers who tabled the bills expressed deep sympathy,” the committee had said in a joint statement signed by Dr Ashok Dhawale, Raju Shetty (ex-MP), Medha Patkar, Pratibha Shinde, Namdev Gawde, SV Jadhav, Dr Ajit Nawale, Kishore Dhamale, Subhash Kakuste, Subhash Lomte, Seema Kulkarni, Raju Desale and Nitin Mate. After Modi’s decision, the committee wants the state to scrap the bills. A minister in the MVA says since the Centre will repeal the laws, they would not come into force in the state.