GHAZIABAD: It’s not just the Delhi Police personnel who are on guard at the Ghazipur border. Succha Singh from Meerut is giving them company.
His hand firm on the steering of his old tractor, Singh considers him the “last line of defence”. He is there along with a few other farmers to prevent the protesters from breaking the barricades and trying to barge into the Delhi side.
“We have placed a couple of tractors so that the entire width of the road is blocked. We are the last line of defence. Beyond this, it is the only the policemen who are keeping guard,” said the 50-something farmer from Meerut. “We are here to prevent a few overzealous farmers from trying to cross over to the other side. I am in charge here and I will stop any kind of misadventure,” he added.
For the past two days, the protesting farmers had been making multiple attempts to cross over to the Delhi side, but to no avail. Monday was a little peaceful in comparison. Since morning, the protesters made just one attempt to break the barricades and enter the capital.
The protest site, too, resembled nothing less than a picnic ground — with groups of farmers singing here and there, some cooking meals and others eating lunch in a huddle. Smoke still billowed out of a couple of burnt out bonfires, which had been set alight the previous night.
“What to do? It gets cold at night. So, we have to make arrangements to keep ourselves warm,” said Amit Awana, a member of the Kisan Ekta Sangh, who had wrapped himself in a quilt.
There was no shortage of food for the protesting farmers. A few members of the Sikh community have been cooking food in a makeshift kitchen and feeding the protesters daily. “As a mark of solidarity with the agitating farmers, we are offering them food daily. At the nearby gurdwara, we are running a mega kitchen. Food from there is being transported in mini trucks,” said Balkar Singh. “On an average, we have been feeding more than 1,000 people daily. They include our friends from the media as well,” he added.
In the middle of all this, there was commotion within a group a little ahead. Here, two men were being labelled pickpockets. ‘Check for his pockets, he has taken my mobile phone,” a farmer shouted as a couple of policemen dragged Gulzar and Dharmendra — the two accused of pickpocketing — to the nearest police picket.