Rakesh Tikait removes a tent at protest site, later calls it ‘Diwali cleaning’

GHAZIABAD: Farmer leader Rakesh Tikait and other members of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) on Thursday removed a tent that faced the police barricades on NH-9 under the UP Gate flyover, triggering speculation that protesters leading the sit-in agitation at the border since last November would free up the roads for traffic.
The removal of the tent was meant to make the point that the UP Gate-Ghazipur border is blocked because of Delhi Police barricades, not the protest itself, which the farmers have been arguing in the Supreme Court during hearings into the blockade of roads at Delhi’s borders.
Tikait rubbished talk, mostly on social media, that farmers were vacating the protest site. He said the agitation will continue the same way at the Ghazipur border. “There is no decision to withdraw the movement,” said Dharmendra Malik, BKU’s media in-charge.
There were premature claims that farmers would allow traffic to pass through by removing tents. Tikait’s comments early in the day fuelled that. “We are going to Delhi. We have not blocked the road. We are removing our tents and Delhi Police should also remove their barricades. Let people go from here. We will also go to Parliament if barricades are removed,” Tikait told the media.
Later, the BKU leader who has become the poster boy of the agitation against the new central farm laws, claimed since Diwali was round the corner, farmers were only cleaning their tents and changing curtains. “Rumours are being made about farmers leaving the border while showing videos of cleaning being done by farmers for Diwali,” he said.
In any case, removing a few tents from NH-9 will not make any difference to traffic in the area. The camps pitched by protesters on the highway stretch all the way to Khoda Colony from the border and the entire area will have to be cleared for traffic to resume. Delhi Police will have to also remove barricades, multiple layers of which have been installed at the border after the tractor parade fiasco on Republic Day.
Traffic headed towards Delhi on NH-9 and the Delhi-Meerut Expressway via UP Gate has remained suspended since the last week of November in 2020 when the agitation began. Traffic from Raj Nagar Extension, headed for Delhi via the Hindon Elevated Road, is also suspended. SP (traffic) Ramanand Kushwaha told TOI the farmers’ removal of a tent did not make any difference for commuters travelling from Indirapuram and Noida who want to go to Delhi.