Multai to Mandsaur: Farmers face bullets despite change in regimes
DURING 1998 MULTAI AGITATION, 24 FARMERS WERE KILLED AND
150 WERE INJURED IN POLICE FIRING
“Goli chalaane waale wahi log, goli khaane waale wahi log, kewal goli chalwaane waale badal gaye. (Those who fire bullets (police) and those who take the bullets (farmer) are the same. Only those who get the bullets fired at farmers have changed (government)”.
This is how former MLA Sunilam, who had led farmers agitation in Multai in 1998, summed up the farmers’ fate in the past two decades since Multai in which as many as 24 were killed and about 150 injured.
Multai firing reverberated in Mandsaur firing, though there is a difference of magnitude. Cultivators demands go contrary to the state government’s claims that Madhya Pradesh has made tremendous achievements in the past 14 years since BJP came to power. However, during the BJP government it’s at least second time when the police opened fire at farmers. A farmer was killed in Bareli a few years back during another farmer agitation.
Cornered by the Congress on the death of five farmers in Mandsaur on Tuesday, the BJP leaders, including Union minister Venkaiah Naidu and BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, were prompt enough to remind the Congress about the death of 24 farmers during Multai agitation.
The then Congress government had blamed the BJP for the violence during the farmers agitation and now in a role reversal it is the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh which is accusing the Congress for inciting people to indulge in violence.
Sunilam said the then Congress government had at least suspended the then collector and the SP, but Shivraj government denied the police firing. Former director, Agriculture, GS Kaushal said there was hardly any difference in the life of farmers given flawed policies and vision of the successive governments.
State Congress spokesperson JP Dhanopia said BJP got exposed for doing nothing for the farmers. That’s why it wanted to use 1998 incident as its shield.