Farmers Movement Archive

Crackdown on farm protests, Rakesh Tikait in stand-off at UP Gate

NEW DELHI: A standoff built up through Thursday between police and protesters at UP Gate on Delhi’s Ghazipur border after the UP government ordered farmers camping there to be vacated and Bharatiya Kisan Union’s Tikait faction, the outfit leading the sit-in agitation at the site, dug in its heels and announced it would move the Supreme Court on Friday against the attempt to evict the protesters. BKU leader Rakesh Tikait, who held fort at UP Gate as tension rose after the protesters were served a notice by the Ghaziabad administration to leave and a heavy police contingent moved in, said, “The Supreme Court has not raised any objections to peaceful protest. No violence has taken place here (at UP Gate). I will challenge the order in the Supreme Court on Friday.” The local administration snapped power supply to the camps on the highway that have housed thousands of protesters since the agitation began in the last week of November at UP Gate, which formed the troika, alongside Singhu and Tikri, that became the main protest centres against the new farming laws. The water tanker service was discontinued as well. Most mobile toilets were removed, too. But even as the BKU held out, other protests folded up – primary among them the agitation at Atoha in Palwal on the Delhi-Agra highway – as the tide continued to turn after the Republic Day violence in Delhi during the farmers’ tractor rally. “The Red Fort incident changed everything overnight,” admitted Shiv Kumar Kakka, who was leading the Atoha protest as he decided to wrap up the agitation, a day after more than 2,000 protesters were booked for a clash in Faridabad during a Republic Day tractor rally. Kakka said the protest had also lost the support of locals. The previous night, in UP’s Baghpat, police evicted protesters camping on the Delhi-Saharanpur highway. An FIR was also filed against the farmers under IPC sections 283 (obstruction in public way), 341 (wrongful restraint), 188 (disobedience of order promulgated by public servant), 269 (spreading infection) and sections of the Epidemic Diseases Act. At Singhu border, Delhi Police installed new barricades near the passage to the protest site, leaving visitors with no option but to take long detours passing through residential areas. Police also began stopping private vehicles a few kilometres before from the protest site, allowing only government vehicles to go forward. There are more boots on the ground as well. The crowd at the protest site too had conspicuously thinned. Farmers said they will stay put and only those who had come to participate in the tractor parade had returned. The Burari grounds, meanwhile, were cleared of protesters. Around 30 of them moved to Singhu and 15 were detained for their possible involvement in the violence on January 26. “By 8pm, the Burari grounds were vacated,” said a senior police officer.

The Times of India

2021-01-29

Delhi