By Alasdair Pal
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that it had summoned the UK’s high commissioner to what it called a “biased and unjustified discussion” of Indian agricultural reforms in the British parliament.
Three new agricultural laws introduced by India at the end of last year have sparked months of protests by farmers, irritated by what they see as a suggestion for large private buyers.
An argument between UK lawmakers on Monday caused anger in New Delhi, which accuses parliamentarians of interfering in India’s internal affairs.
At Tuesday’s meeting, India’s Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla told Alexander Ellis, who was appointed envoy earlier this year, the debate “represented a major interference in the policy of another democratic country”, according to with a statement from the ministry.
“He advised that British parliamentarians should refrain from practicing the vote bank policy by distorting events, especially towards another fellow democracy,” he added, in an apparent reference to British lawmakers and voters of Indian descent.
A spokesman for the British High Commission, as the country’s embassy in India is known, declined to comment.
The unrest has been particularly intense in the state of Punjab, which has large diasporas in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.
India summoned Canada’s envoy in December after critical comments by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The protests were given global prominence after celebrities, including pop star Rihanna and climate activist Greta Thunberg, expressed their support for the movement earlier this year.
(Reporting by Alasdair Pal in New Delhi, edited by William Maclean)