Farmers Movement Archive

BKU leader’s tractor drive to talks venue stopped

GHAZIABAD: Like the last eight days, Saturday’s protests by farmers at UP Gate had their share of drama. It began with the man heading the protest — senior Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait — and some supporters trying to cross over to Delhi in a tractor for the fifth round of talks with the Centre for a resolution to the deadlock over the new farm laws that has thousands of farmers camping at the capital’s borders. But Delhi Police did not allow them to do so. When repeated appeals cut no ice with the cops, Tikait and his aides headed towards the capital in an SUV. Later in the day, UP Congress chief Ajay Kumar Lallu arrived at the protest site to show solidarity with the farmers. But he had to leave soon after the farmers told him they did not want their cause to be “politicised”. “If you are so concerned about our plight, you should sit here along with us, braving this December chill and other such difficulties. Parties and leaders are only interested in politicising the matter. We can’t allow our cause to be diluted like this,” said Ramdhar Singh, a farmer camping at UP Gate. Lallu isn’t the first politician to visit the UP Gate protest site — Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad had met the protesters earlier in the week. In another part of the protest site at UP Gate on Saturday, a group of farmers from Punjab burnt an effigy of actor Kangana Ranaut for social media comments that were construed to be against the farmers’ cause. A police team present at the spot doused the flames. However, the decision to burn the effigy did not go down well with another group of BKU farmers a little ahead on the Delhi-Meerut Expressway. “We disassociate ourselves from such kind of rhetoric and action. These are an attempt by a few to digress from the real issue,” a BKU leader shouted from a makeshift podium along the DME. Late in the evening, a statement issued by BKU said the fifth round of talks that had been held with the government in Delhi had failed to end the deadlock. A fresh round of meetings will now be held on December 9, the statement said.

The Times of India

2020-12-06

Ghaziabad