Farmers to step up protest against BJP nominees in Punjab

Ruchika M Khanna

Chandigarh, May 13

Refusing to be cowed down by the preventive arrests of some farm leaders during the past few days, unions have decided to escalate their protests.

Three farmer leaders of the Kirti Kisan Union Rajinder Singh Deepsinghwala, Naunihal Singh and Gurmeet Singh Sangrahur were detained by the police yesterday, though they were released today. They were detained for leading protests against BJP candidates.

Last week, Harnek Singh Mehma of the BKU Dhaner group was also arrested on similar charges. Even today, farmers continued their protest and some farmer leaders were also detained in Nawanshahr district.

For the past few weeks, the unions have been protesting against the BJP candidates, stopping them from campaigning. Almost 100 protests by farmers against them have been reported till date, according to reports. Most of the protests have been held in Amritsar, Bathinda, Faridkot and Patiala, which, the farmer union leaders say, will be spread to all constituencies in the coming days.

A BJP delegation has also met the Chief Electoral Officer, Punjab, complaining against their candidates not being given a level-playing field while campaigning and expressed concern over the conduct of free and fair elections. Following this, the CEO Sibin C had appealed to the farmers to allow the candidates to campaign and asked the police to ensure that free and fair elections were conducted.

Samyukt Kisan Morcha leader Dr Darshan Pal said they would continue with their programme of “Expose, Oppose and Punish BJP”. This would be spread over by the unions. We will have a meeting of leaders on Tuesday morning, where we will take a call on future course of action. If the AAP government ontinues to arrest our leaders, we will also protest against them,” he said.

During a meeting of five kisan unions here, their leaders, including Balbir Singh Rajewal, Prem Singh Bhangu and Kanwalpreet Singh Pannu, also objected to the detention of farmers protesting peacefully against BJP leaders. “The farmers are only asking them questions, but state repression is being unleashed on them. We appeal to the EC to restrain the BJP from provoking the situation,” they said.