COURTESY HT DEC 2
More support for protesters at UP Gate
Peeyush Khandelwal
peeyush.khandelwal@hindustantimes.com
Ghaziabad : Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad and Jan Adhikar Party chief Pappu Yadav on Tuesday met the protesting farmers at UP Gate, Ghaziabad’s border with Delhi, and lent their support. “Farmers are protesting not only at UP Gate but at every corner of the country. They are agitating today as they are feeling helpless. They have been forced to accept the (farm) laws that they do not want,” Chandrashekhar told reporters at UP Gate on Tuesday. “If the minimum support price (MSP) is removed, they know what will happen. I have just returned from Bihar elections and farmers are forced to sell rice at ₹600 per quintal, while the MSP is ₹1,970. If there is no MSP for farmer there will be no guarantee of return. Further, there are issues of electricity bills. There are of people who work with farmers and everyone will face issues. Farmers are not terrorists but they are forced to face water cannons in the winter chill. It is good that the talks are going on and the government should have spoken to them long ago.”
Pappu Yadav, a four-time MP who fought the Bihar elections in alliance with Azad, said, “They (police) filed FIRs against farmers. The government should withdraw it and talk to farmers without putting pressure on them. Farming should get status of industry and the farmer should be able to fix price for the crop.”
The arrival of the leaders and their supporters saw the gathering at the border site swell.
“About 500-700 people had gathered there as Bhim Army supporters had also arrived. However, they returned after meeting farmers. The traffic diversions were already in place and there was no untoward incident. We already have police personnel deployed at the spot,” said Gyanendra Singh, superintendent of police (City 2).
The protesting farmers, led by one of the largest farmer organisations in the country Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), had arrived at the site from different districts in western UP on Saturday and were camping below the UP Gate flyover. They were stopped from entering the national capital to protest against the Centre’s farm laws. Farmers said that far from liberalising their trade, as the Centre believes, it actually harmed their interests