Farmers Movement Archive

200 days into stir, farmers eye poll-bound states

Tribune News ServiceChandigarh, June 14Two hundred days of protest and counting… after having sustained the agitation against the Centre’s three farm laws for over six months, the farmers are all set to replicate the “Punjab-Haryana model of agitation” in the poll-bound Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand in the coming months.Protest strategy to be replicatedOur protests will grow in the coming days. The protest strategy adopted in Punjab and Haryana will be replicated in UP and Uttarakhand. - Darshan Pal, SKM LeaderThough the Centre is yet to respond to the request of the farmers’ organisations to resume talks, those leading the agitation are in no rush and looking at spreading the agitation to states going to the polls next year.“The West Bengal results have proved the dent we can make. If you think the BJP is not rattled in Punjab and Haryana and the Centre is indifferent to our protest, it is not so. We are firming up our plans for the poll-bound states and will fan out in every village and colony. The government will not be able to ignore our presence. The 200 days of protest has already proved to them that the farmers are going nowhere,” says Haryana BKU leader Gurnam Singh Charuni.While the protests against BJP leaders will continue in Haryana and laying of foundation stones will not be allowed, the farmers are focusing on the June 26 programme to submit a memorandum to Governors against the laws. The programme is being organised to mark seven months of the protest and also the day Emergency was declared in India in 1975.“We are in a state of undeclared emergency under the present government at the Centre. Our protests will grow in the coming days,” Samyukt Kisan Morcha leader Darshan Pal explains, adding that the protest strategy of Punjab and Haryana will be replicated in UP and Uttarakhand to “expose” the BJP.Though the numbers at Tikri and Singhu have dropped as compared to the initial months, the farmers maintain that they have no more reason to use these protest sites as a show of strength.“Farmers of every village from Punjab and Haryana visit the protest site on a rotation basis. We have shown our strength to the government. Everyone will come back to the protest sites when the programme to campaign against the BJP in election-bound states is finalised,” says BKU (Rajewal) leader Pargat Singh.

The Tribune

2021-06-15