BATHINDA/JIND: Even as the farmers’ protest has intensified in Punjab with police resorting to lathicharge on protesters in Moga on Thursday, leading to expected rise in confrontation between peasants and political parties, the stage is set for another political fight in Uttar Pradesh. The farmers, while fighting a battle against the agriculture marketing laws, do not want to lag behind in supporting the war to be fought under the campaign of ‘Mission UP’. Farmers, aiming to put pressure on the Union government to concede to its demands of repealing the farm laws and enacting a law guaranteeing MSP on all crops, want the Muzaffarnagar show, where ‘Mission UP’ will be kickstarted, to be as a grand success.
The ‘Kisan Mahapanchayat’ to be held on September 5 in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh.
According to farm groups over 25,000 farmers are expected to reach Muzaffarnagar on Sunday, with hundreds of buses leaving for the venue from various places in Punjab on Saturday. Over 2,000 farmers are expected to take trains from Amritsar, Jalandhar and Ludhiana in the wee hours of Sunday to reach Muzzafarnagar by 10.40am.
Various farm organisations of Punjab have assigned duties to its district units to arrange buses and sensitise farmers about timings and stoppages of the trains for travel to Muzaffarnagar. They said Muzaffarnagar will prove to be a big milestone in the history of farm struggle, as it will be a nail in the coffin of BJP-led Uttar Pradesh government, which will force the central government to listen to the grievances of protesting farmers, who have already completed more than nine months at the borders of Delhi.
“We have hired 150 buses as over 6,000 farmers, including 1,000 women, will reach Muzaffarnagar. All buses will be asked to stop at a given distance from Muzaffarnagar, from where the caravan will begin,” said Punjab’s biggest farm organisation BKU (Ekta Ugrahan) general secretary Sukhdev Singh Kokri Kalan.
BKU (Ekta Dakaunda) general secretary Jagmohan Singh said, “Many of our activists will travel by trains from different locations.” Likewise, BKU Kadian president Harmeet Singh Kadian said nearly 2,000 activists will catch the super express train from Amritsar at 4am, from Jalandhar at 5am and Ludhiana at 6am.
Farm bodies in Haryana claimed that lakhs of people are going to take part in this kisan rally to show the Manohar Lal Khattar-led government in the state and the Centre that the farmers’ community across the country is united.
BKU (Charuni) Jind president Azad Singh Palwan, who has been staging a village chaupal seeking maximum mobilisation in Muzaffarnagar, said, “The kisan mahapanchayat will be held 170km from Jind district. People from Jind and nearby areas will leave in the early hours on September 5 while those in Sirsa district would leave a day early.”
