Clamour against farm laws grows in Shamli
Thousands of farmers turned up for a meeting in Shamli district in western Uttar Pradesh on Friday amid a growing clamour against the Centre's agrimarketing laws in the region.
People from Shamli and nearby districts started reaching Shamli's Bhainswal village on tractors, two- and four-wheelers and on foot for a 'kisan panchayat' being held there by the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD).
The people gathered there despite the Shamli administration denying permission for the meeting and imposing prohibitory orders under section 144 of the CrPC.
This is the fourth major farmers' meeting in western Uttar Pradesh after Muzaffarnagar, Mathura and Baghpat, besides some in Haryana, to support the ongoing stir against the farm laws.
Scores of regional 'khap' leaders, Bharatiya Kisan Union members and RLD vice president Jayant Chaudhary, among others, attended the event, even as security personnel were deployed in large number in the area.
RLD leader Chaudhary had on Thursday tweeted that there are "144 reasons why I will go to Shamli tomorrow", attaching to it a news article on the denial of permission for the event by the Shamli district administration.
The RLD has already extended support to the ongoing peasants' demonstrations at Delhi's borders and in parts of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.
The party's farmer outreach programmes which began Friday in Shamli are further scheduled to be held in Amroha, Aligarh, Bulandshahr, Mathura, Agra, Hathras, Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh and a couple of them in Rajasthan during the February month. Farmers ask BJP MPs, MLAs to clear stand on stir In a move that could have farreaching consequences on the politics in UP, a panchayat in Agra has asked the 9 MLAs and 2 MPs of the district to either issue a letter of support to the protesting farmers or face "social boycott". This comes a week af
ter the khap panchayats in Muzaffarnagar called for a social boycott of those who do not support the farmers’ agitation. “We will stage
protests at residences of MLAs and 2 MPs in the districts. We will ask them to provide a letter supporting the peaceful protest of farmers or they will have to face social boycott,” he said.
A BJP MLA from Muzaffarnagar, requesting anonymity, said "We are caught in a Catch 22 situation. If we do not support the farmers, we cannot win the elections in 2022. However, we cannot defy the partyline. Our leadership should try to resolve the matter at the earliest because both sides seem to be hardening their stand."
These are not the nails being put on the roads going to Delhi, these are the nails put into the political coffin that is being made for the BJP. This is a very hurtful image that has gone out. These are the people who freed Delhi from the British, who fought against the Mughals, whenever there was a crisis in Delhi, it was the farmers close to Delhi in Punjab, Haryana, UP that were first there. Today, the Kisan Ghat (memorial of former PM Charan Singh), Parliament and Rajghat are in Delhi, and you are forbidding these farmers from even entering Delhi. — Jayant Chaudhary, Rashtriya Lok Dal vice president