Gurgaon: Traffic from Palwal to Delhi and Agra remained disrupted for several hours on Sunday morning after about 300 farmers from Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh blocked NH-19. The farmers, protesting against the three agriculture laws, were on their way to Delhi in tractor-trolleys but police stopped them at the KGP-KMP Chowk.
The fact that a group of farmers from Rajasthan and MP was already protesting there only added to the chaos. Stopped from moving ahead, the protesters removed the barricades and jostled with cops. They then resorted to blocking the national highway. This prompted the cops to put another row of barricades on NH-19 and divert traffic via Hodal and Hathin. The Haryana cops also sealed the borders in Punhana and Firozepur-Jhirka in Nuh district after they got information that a group of farmers from Rajasthan were coming.
Commuters have been among the worst sufferers of the agitations. Thousands of vehicles were stranded on the Delhi-Agra NH-2 for almost 20 hours since Friday night after Haryana Police blocked its border with UP at Mathura’s Kotwan due to a similar protest in Palwal and Hodal. The border was opened on Saturday evening.
On Sunday, a group of 30 farmers from Palwal were detained near Badhkal Chowk after they tried to force their way to Delhi. They were released after nearly two hours. However, the farmers, led by Bharatiya Kisan Union national secretary Ratan Singh Sorot, decided to stay put at Badhkal Chowk and again try to move towards Delhi on Monday morning.
Malvinder Singh, a farmer leader from Madhya Pradesh, said they had brought along ration to stay here for months. “Either the government agrees to our requests or we will keep protesting. We reached Palwal via Mathura from Gwalior and will move towards Delhi now. More than a thousand farmers are coming from different parts of MP through this route and will join us the day after tomorrow in Delhi,” he said.
“We also want that the farmers who have been jailed during the protests be freed immediately. The government should lend an ear to all our demands and address them soon. Until that happens, we will continue our protest. This time, the farmers will not go home until the government withdraws the three laws,” he added.
The group of farmers that had already been protesting on the KGP-KMP Chowk had not blocked any road. It was the group from Gwalior that stalled traffic when they were stopped from moving ahead. “The farmers at the chowk came on to the highway and blocked traffic for hours. Our officers have been holding talks with them to vacate the highway area. The traffic from Delhi to Agra had to be diverted,” a senior police officer said.
A team of Haryana Police has been deployed on the Rajasthan border in Sunahera village of Punhana subdivision. “Some farmers were to come to Sunehra. Following instructions from a senior official, a heavy police force has been deployed here. The border is being monitored,” an officer said.