Farmers Movement Archive

BKU leader steered Lakhimpur Kheri narrative

In the Lakhimpur Kheri stand-off between farmers and the Uttar Pradesh Government, the role of Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait has come under the scanner. While a section is praising his practical approach in preventing a tricky situation from spiralling out of control and keeping the farmers’ movement on track, others feel he agreed for too little, too soon and appeared like a BJP agent after the incident that resulted in eight deaths, including that of four Sikh farmers. However, there is no doubt that post-Sunday, Mr. Tikait has strengthened his image as the sole leader of farmers in the region and that the ruling dispensation is fuelling his ambition. Observers say the BJP government has added a few more metres to the long rope that it has given to the BKU since January when he broke down in public at the Ghazipur border protest site. Easy entry While political leaders like Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Akhilesh Yadav, and Satish Chandra Mishra were either detained or stopped from proceeding to Lakhimpur, the BKU leader was given free access. Sources in the BKU confirmed that though the Ghaziabad administration was hesitant, verbal orders from Lucknow cleared the path for Mr. Tikait. Notably, ADG (Law & Order) Prashant Kumar, who addressed the farmers with Mr. Tikait in Tikunia, was serving in Meerut Zone before being promoted. Observers said the argument that Mr. Tikait leads a non-political farmer outfit does not hold much weight because another BKU leader, Gurnam Singh Chaduni, head of the Haryana faction and a prominent face of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha, was detained in Meerut for violating Section 144. Other prominent leaders of the SKM like Yogendra Yadav and Shiv Kumar Kakkaji chose to continue with their pre-decided programmes. Observers recall that something similar happened after the Republic Day incident in January this year when the administration and one-upmanship of Mr. Tikait pushed V.M. Singh, a farmer leader from the Terai belt, out of the Ghazipur protest site, leaving his supporters under the BKU umbrella. “On January 28, when Tikait decided to stay put at the Ghazipur border despite all odds, the Sikh farmers from the Terai belt in U.P. and Uttarakhand found a new leader in him, somebody who saved their dignity in the hour of crisis,” said a senior farmer leader from the Terai belt. “Had he left, a 1984 kind of situation could have unfolded at the Ghazipur border,” he said. By listening to the officers on the ground, the BJP has virtually accepted that the party didn’t have a leader in the region whom farmers would listen to during a crisis. Those who know Mr. Tikait say that like his father he wants to be the sole leader of farmers in the region. Questioning Mr. Tikait’s focus on compensation rather than the arrest of the son of Union Minister Ajay Kumar Mishra, some like Ravindra Singh of Khalsa Aid have described the announced amount of Rs. 45 lakh as “blood money without seeking full justice.”

The Hindu

2021-10-07

Ghaziabad