Farmers Movement Archive

Farm group says have plans to strengthen stir

Bathinda: Despite surge in Covid-19 cases, the farm organisation — BKU (Ekta Ugrahan) — has decided to further strengthen the farm protest by mobilising more farmers to the borders of Delhi. It would take big convoys of farmers every Sunday to the protest sites at Delhi borders. The first convoy will be sent on May 23 adopting Covid-19 protocols. And before sending the next jatha, the previous jatha will return to Punjab before Sundays. The farm organisation has also decided to take on the Congress-led Punjab government and BJP-led Union government for “miserably failing to effectively tackle the coronavirus pandemic”. For the purpose, the organisation has decided to hold a sit-in at Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh’s native town Patiala from May 28 to 30. It has decided to increase the scope of call for observing black day on May 26 by including failure of the governments in tackling Covid apart from opposing the contentious farm laws. The farm organisation has termed the prevailing situation as like ‘sadme ka sidhant’ or ‘aapda me avsar’ (benefit in calamity) being adopted by the Centre in providing benefit to corporates, which is reason why the government has provided relief to aggrieved people. The decisions were taken at the state-level meeting of the organization held at Moga on Thursday evening. BKU (Ekta Ugrahan) president Joginder Singh Ugrahan said the Union government has miserably failed in preparing ground to take on the pandemic. The Centre had claimed that 162 oxygen plants would be set up in 150 districts of the country, but so far only 33 units have been set up even as close to 3 lakh people have died in the country due to Covid and India has turned out to be the worst country in tackling corona.

The Times of India

2021-05-22

Chandigarh