Farmers Movement Archive

‘Rail roko’ by farmers passes off peacefully

Protesting farmers sat on railway tracks at hundreds of locations and stopped some trains during a four-hour ‘rail roko’ agitation on Thursday. The Railways said there was a “negligible” impact on the running of trains across the country. For a few passengers on trains stopped by the agitation, the ‘rail roko’ involved showering of flower petals and jaggery and distribution of milk by protesting farmers. In other locations, tractors were brought onto the tracks. Farm unions said thousands had participated in the nationwide agitation, including protests at a large number of stations in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Telangana, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. Although protesters were detained at several locations, both the unions and the Railways said the protest passed off peacefully, without any incidents of violence. In Punjab, where farmers blocked rail lines and stations for several weeks last year, the core group of 32 protesting unions laid siege to tracks in at least 40 locations, according to Jagmohan Singh, general secretary of the Bharatiya Kisan Union-Dakaunda. “Farmers peacefully sat on a dharna on railway tracks to convey their anguish,” he said. Women join protest The BKU-Ekta Ugrahan, one of the largest farm unions in the State, which is not part of the 32 unions, said its members blocked the tracks at 22 locations, including Bathinda, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Patiala districts. The Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee, which had refused to lift the earlier blockade of passenger trains even when other unions relented, blocked tracks at over 30 places including Amritsar, Gurdaspur and Kapurthala. Farmers, supported by khap panchayats, traders and workers’ unions, blocked rail lines at 44 points across Haryana, with a large number of women taking part in the Rohtak and Charkhi Dadri districts. Hisar, Sirsa, Jind and Rohtak accounted for more than half the protest sites. In Bahadurgarh, one of the sites of the sit-in agitation for the past two months, farmers blocked railway traffic at five points. Leading the agitation at Patuwas, farmer leader Raju Maan said they were ready to make any sacrifice to get the farm laws repealed. In Rajasthan, farmers brought a tractor on the track near the Ajarka station in Alwar district to block the movement of trains. A large group gathered at the Gandhi Nagar station in Jaipur and climbed on the engine of a goods train.

The Hindu

2021-02-19

NEW DELHI