Tikait to tour five states in March to drum up support

Ghaziabad, Feb. 28: Farmer leader Rakesh Tikait will be touring five states in March to drum up support for the ongoing farmers’ protest against Centre’s new agriculture laws, a Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) office-bearer said.

Tikait, the national spokesperson of the BKU and a prominent face of the farmers’ protest, will begin the tour from March 1, the office-bearer said.

“Farmers’ meetings will be held in Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana, while two meetings will also be held in Uttar Pradesh in March,” BKU media incharge Dharmendra Malik said.

Two meetings will be held in Rajasthan and three in Madhya Pradesh. The last three meetings will be held on March 20, 21 and 22 in Karnataka, Malik said.

“One event is scheduled on March 6 in Telangana, but we have not got permission for it yet due to some election in the state. If permission is granted, the meeting in Telangana will be held as per schedule,” he said.

Thousands of farmers are camping at Delhi’s border points at Tikri, Singhu and Ghazipur since November with a demand that the Centre should repeal the contentious farm laws enacted in September last year and frame a new one guaranteeing the minimum support price (MSP) on crops.

Tikait is leading the protest at Ghazipur. The government, which has held 11 rounds of formal talks with the protesting farm unions, maintains that the laws are profarmer.

Meanwhile, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday called the new farm laws a “death warrant” for farmers, claiming they would take away their land and reduce them to labourers on their own farms.

Addressing a Kisan Mahapanchayat organised in Meerut by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) against the Centre’s contentious laws, Kejriwal said farmers are continuously agitating in the cold because their farms will be taken over by capitalists.