Tikait exhorts east Uttar Pradesh farmers to march to Delhi post harvest

VARANASI: Bharatiya Kisan Union national spokesperson and Sanyukta Kisan Morcha convener Rakesh Tikait on Wednesday appealed to the farmers in eastern UP to march to Delhi with their tractors in protest against the new agri laws, after harvesting their crops.

Tikait was addressing first Kisan Mahapanchayat in Sikandarpur of Ballia to mobilize the farmers of this region in support of the farmers’ movement.

Tikait said, “Harvest your crops. After that a tractor and 15 people from every village should march to Delhi in support of the farmers’ movement against the new farm laws. As soon as the 15 farmers with a tractor each from the villages in the region will start marching towards Delhi, the government will have to repeal the laws.”

Taking a dig at the centre, Tikait said, “The new agri laws are meant to snatch the lands of the farmers. Despite 12 rounds of dialogue and continuing farmer movement against these laws, the government is neither ready to repeal them nor making a concrete law on minimum support price (MSP).”

Tikait alleged that the government ws plotting to divide the farmers. The farmer movement was sometimes referred to as the movement of Punjab and then movement of farmers of Haryana and then it was linked to Khalistan. But the farmers didn’t move away. Now it had become the movement of every farmer, he said.

Tikait said that the farmers’ movement against the new agri laws was being discussed all over the world today, but the government was ignoring it. He said 2021 would be year of farmers’ movement, which would continue till the government repealed the farm laws and enacted a concrete law on MSP to give minimum support price to the farmers. He alleged that the centre wanted markets and small shops closed. “If small shops are closed, employment will come to an end. This is not only the fight against three farm laws but a fight for the self-respect of farmers.