Ghaziabad: With slogans of “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan” filling the air, the farmers protesting at UP Gate held a mahapanchayat on Thursday afternoon to decide the further course of action. The farmers, who have been protesting near the Ghazipur border for the past six days, were joined by many more from Uttarakhand, Punjab and other parts of the state.
“The ball is in the Centre’s court now. Give us our right and we will go back. The other option is to thrash us and send us back home. We will not budge an inch on our own until our demands are met. We are ready to sit here till January 26 and even extend our protest to August 15. Talks are going on with the central government, and the further course of action will depend on that,” said Naresh Tikait, national president of the Bhartiya Kisan Union, who led the mahapanchayat.
The farmers had on Wednesday organised a havan so that “good sense” prevailed within the government. After the mahapanchayat, the BKU functionaries threatened to block all routes to Delhi if the government did not withdraw the three agriculture laws passed recently in the Parliament. They said the Centre should accept their demands all the more because they needed to go back to their villages and attend to their farmland.
Since morning, farmer groups from various districts of Uttarakhand, Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh arrived at UP Gate to take part in the mahapanchayat. Slogans against the government echoed through the day.
There were a few stray incidents of farmers trying to break the barricades and cross over to Delhi. Around 3pm, a group of farmers from Bulandshahr tried to sit on the carriageway from Delhi, but police prevented them. A heavy police team, including PAC and rapid action force personnel, was deployed at the border.
Around 4.30pm, members of the Bharatiya Kisan Union came in about three dozen tractor-trolleys and tried to move towards Delhi. They were 500 metres from the border and forced to return to the protest site at UP Gate.
Senior officials, including Ghaziabad district magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey and IG (Meerut range) Praveen Kumar, came to UP Gate in the evening to monitor the situation.
Congress functionary Udit Raj also participated in the mahapanchayat, insisting he had come in personal capacity to ensure Dalits’ participation in the protest. He blamed the Centre for allowing the farmers’ agitation to swell.
Earlier in the day, a group of farmers blocked the Delhi-Meerut Expressway’s carriageway to Delhi and threw the city’s traffic out of gear.
The farmers said they were forced to hit the streets and block them because “nobody is paying” attention to their demands for the past six days.
It was around 8.30am that the crowd of farmers started spilling on to the roads. A large number of police and administrative officers tried to reason with the protesters, but they were in no mood to relent. Through the day, ADM (city) Shailendra Kumar Singh and other senior officers held several rounds of talks with the protesters, but could not get any breakthrough. In the evening, the paramilitary force was called to surround the agitators and open the road for traffic, following which a large number of farmers sitting at UP Gate rushed to the flyover and challenged the police to take action against them.
“A lane of the carriageway was opened after several talks with the farmers. Despite provocations, we exercised restraint and did not allow any untoward incident to take place,” Ghaziabad DM Pandey said.