BATHINDA: Less than 10 days after vacating the protest sites at the borders of Delhi, another stir point has been created outside the Bathinda district administrative complex (DAC), albeit for five days to start with.
A number of tractor-trolleys with facilities to sleep, quite like those put up at Tikri and Singhu border protest sites for over a year, have occupied the area. Instead of plush SUVs, makeshift night shelters are dotting the lane from deputy commissioner’s office to the officer’s residence.
One side of the road outside DAC is now under the possession of the protesters from the largest farmer faction, BKU Ekta Ugrahan. The farm organisation on Monday started its five-day-long protest at the deputy commissioner offices in 15 districts for the demands pertaining to the Punjab government, which include debt waiver, compensation to suicide-hit farm-labourer families and compensation for damage to cotton crop due to pink bollworm attack.
The farm activists reached the entrance of the DC residence by removing the barricades put up nearly 50 metres away on Monday. They parked the tractor-trolleys for the night stay of farmers till the gate of the DC residence. The police though wanted these to be parked away but could not stop the protesters.
BKU Ugrahan had organised its own protest at Bahadurgarh near Tikri border against now repealed farm laws. On Monday, similar slogans were raised and the only difference was that these ones were against the Charanjit Singh Channi-led Congress government in Punjab instead of the Narendra Modi-led Union government.
The farmers also occupied the left side of the road going towards Talwandi Sabo and Mansa and put up their stage in the middle of the road leaving only one side for the traffic.
