Farmers Movement Archive

Thousands of Pilibhit farmers on 470 tractors & 500 bikes rally against new Farm Acts

Pilibhit: After a national call by farmer leaders, more than 3,000 farmers of Pilibhit took out a rally, occupying a 22km stretch of the Puranpur tehsil area on Thursday, under the joint aegis of Rashtriya Kisan Majdoor Sangathan (RKMS) and Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU). A few hundred farmers associated with CPI(ML) also joined in.The farmers, on 470 tractors and over 500 bikes, began their march from Shahjahanpur-Pilibhit border near Kajri Niranjanpur village on Pilibhit-Basti NH-730 at 10am, to reach the Puranpur tehsil headquarters, where they handed over a memorandum of their demands to administrative officials.Earlier on January 5, the state government had sent senior IPS officer Ajay Pal Sharma and Puranpur circle sub-divisional magistrate Rajendra Prasad as emissaries to specifically visit Pilibhit villages with large Sikh populations and convince farmers to not to attend the anti-Farm Act protest programmes. They had addressed a gathering of farmers at Kajri Gurudwara, and appealed to them to cancel the tractor rally, said Jasveer Singh, a farmer of village Andbhoji.“The official also told the farmers they will come to the Shahjahanpur-Pilibhit border to receive the memorandum of farmers’ demands on spot. But as the national leadership of farmers had already issued a whip to take out the tractor rally, it was not possible for us to deviate from the programme,” said local farmer Kuldeep Singh associated with RKMS.The district vice-president of BKU, Manjit Singh, who patronised the rally, said the administration had deployed police force at many spots, though they did not obstruct the march anywhere.After doing a round of Puranpur city, the rally reached Sirsa crossing along the national highway on the outskirts of Puranpur tehsil headquarters, where the farmers handed over their memorandum to the SDM, Rajendra Prasad, in the presence of heavy police force.The 10-point memorandum addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi included the demand for immediate withdrawal of all three Farm Acts, making provisions for awarding pension to farmers and to ensure clearing of sugarcane price arrears of all past as well as the current crushing season immediately, along with interest, he said.

The Times of India

2021-01-08

Bareilly