Maharashtra: Farmers’ march reaches Mumbai, meeting with CM Fadnavis today

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis is scheduled to meet with a delegation of the agitating farmers on Monday. (Express Photo by Deepak Joshi)

Thousands of farmers reached Somaiya ground in Sion, central Mumbai, on Sunday, a day before their planned march on Mantralaya to protest the government’s alleged lack of response to the continuing distress in the farm sector. The farmers, who have been marching towards Mumbai over the past several days, started from the fringes of the city’s eastern suburbs around 1 pm, after lunch on the Eastern Express Highway. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis is scheduled to meet with a delegation of the agitating farmers on Monday.

On Sunday, ministers Girish Mahajan and Vishnu Sawra held discussions with the leaders of the march to try to persuade them not to move towards the Assembly. With the Class X Board exams underway, the government also issued an alert for students to reach exam centres early, keeping in mind the possibility of traffic diversions owing to the march.

EXPLAINED | New edge to agrarian distress: Why demands are more than loan waiver

In the scorching heat, the farmers started moving slowly towards Mumbai, taking breaks for water at regular intervals. They were welcomed by various communities on the highway, who showered flower petals on them. The Shiv Sena, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and other organisations distributed water and biscuits among them. The Sena, MNS and Aam Aadmi Party have announced their support to the farmers’ march.

Apart from young and middle-aged farmers, a large number of women and senior citizens, too, are part of the march.  The farmers have been walking 30-35 kilometres every day, spending nights out in the open. They have been carrying their own rice and preparing khichdi on wood fires.

Hundreds of protesting farmers from Nashik arrive in Thane late Saturday on their the way to Mumbai. (Express Photo: Janak Rathod)

The six-day-long march, called by the Akhil Bharatiya Kisan Sabha (ABKS) affiliated with the CPI(M), began on March 6 from CBS Chowk in Nashik, the location where 1 lakh people had gathered for two days in March 2016. The 180-km march to Mumbai is led by Dr Ashok Dhawale, the president of ABKS, seven-term CPM legislator J P Gavit from Kalwan Assembly constituency in Nashik, and Ajit Nawale, state general secretary of ABKS, and others.

READ | Maharashtra: Shiv Sena, MNS, AAP extend support to farmers’ march

Viju Krishnan, national joint secretary of ABKS, also took part in the march for the first three days. Some of the demands over which the farmers intend to agitate outside the Assembly include a complete waiver of farm loans, transfer of forest land to tillers, implementation of the Swaminathan Commission’s recommendations, compensation of Rs 40,000 per acre to farmers hit by hailstorm and pink bollworm, and putting a stop to sharing the state’s water with Gujarat. The Peasants’ and Workers’ Party and CPI, too, have extended their support to the march.

To avoid an embarrassing situation, the state government invited agitating leaders for talks on Sunday night. (Express Photo: Deepak Joshi)

Krishna Harvate, a farmer from Talwada in Shahapur Tehsil in Thane district, said the state government should improve implementation of the Forest Rights Act, 2006. “Though the Act came in 2006, and the rules were made in 2008, the government is not implementing it effectively. While I have been tilling five, seven or 10 acres of land, they are being offered only 5 or 10 gunthas of land. It is nothing, and the farmers can’t do anything with it. Our demand is to transfer all the land that we have been tilling for decades to us,” said Harvate, who is tilling eight acres of land.

People washing faces, taking baths in a small pond close to service road of Eastern Express Highway (Express Photo by Vishwas Waghmode)

Large numbers of farmers have come from the tribal areas of Surgana, Kalwan, Dindori, Chandwad, Peth in Nashik district and from Shahapur in Thane and Palghar areas.

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