Farmers block Ferozepur Road during protest sit-in

Ludhiana: Traffic on the ever busy Ludhiana-Ferozepur Road and Pakhowal Road remained disturbed, as various farmer associations blocked the Ferozepur Road near the zonal branch of the Punjab National Bank (PNB) for many hours on Thursday afternoon. The farmers from various parts of the state were protesting against the banks for acting against them in cheque bounce cases.
“We have been sitting on a protest in Ludhiana for the past several days in support of our demands. Around 1,000 cheque bounce cases were prepared by the authorities, and about 350 farmers of the state were issued arrest warrants in such cases, with some also being jailed. Banks have taken blank cheques from farmers, and when such a cheque bounces, a farmer has to face legal action because he is unable to pay the loan,” said Sudagar Singh, leader of Bhartiya Kissan Union (BKU) Ekta Ugrahan, who belongs to Ghudani village in Payal.

“Yesterday at around 5pm, we had a meeting with cooperative and jails minister Sukhjinder Randhawa. Talks broke down after we stood by the demand that the government should not trouble farmers with less than ten acres of land who had a debt of Rs10 lakh, but they (government) stuck to their position, saying they would only waive off those farmer’s debt of Rs10 lakh who had land of five acres or less. After the talks ran into rough weather, we decided to stage a protest sit-in near the Zonal Office of Punjab National Bank (PNB) from 1pm to 4pm.”

The farmer groups said 7,000 farmers from across the state participated in the protest march and sit-in. They added that farmer organizations that participated in the Thursday’s protest included BKU Ekta Ugrahan, BKU Krantikari, BKU Ekta Dakunda, Kissan Sangharsh Committee (Azad), Kissan Sangharsh Committee (Punjab), and two others farmer groups.

“Authorities got directions from the court that we cannot assemble within 100 metres near the bank. As our demands have not been met, we rallied around 250m from the bank, but if the authorities don’t concede to our demands, we will go up to about 105 or 110m distance from the zonal branch of the bank,” said Jagmohan Singh, general secretary of BKU Ekta Dakunda. He added: “Tomorrow, the hearing of the case is in the high court, and we will plead our case there as well.”

Meanwhile, as farmer organizations blocked the ever-busy road, commuters had to face a lot of problems. The worst sufferers were those going towards Jagraon and Mullanpur Dakha, who did not have prior information about the blockade. “Even as the authorities had diverted traffic to Pakhowal Road and Hambran Road, it was quite a bad scenario for commuters because of the chaos. It took us an hour-and-a-half to reach Mullanpur, as after getting stuck in traffic on Ferozepur Road, we took the Pakhowal Road, but that too was choked for some time,” said Manjeet Singh, a city resident.