New Delhi/lucknow, Dec 7: Farmer leaders on Monday said that emergency services will be allowed during ‘Bharat Bandh’ on December 8, and appealed to their affiliates to not force anyone to observe the shut down against the three recently enacted agriculture-related laws.
Addressing a press conference here, farmer leader Balbir Singh Rajewal said that the Central government will have to accept the demands of farmers to scrap the new laws whose passage has sparked protests.
The agitating farmers have already announced that they would occupy toll plazas between 11 am to 3 pm during the ‘Bharat Bandh’. Bhartiya Kisan Ekta Sangathan president Jagjit singh Dallewala appealed to farmers to maintain peace and not to enter into any scuffle to enforce the bandh.
He said the ‘bandh’ will be effective across the country. “The Modi government will have to accept our demands. We want nothing less than withdrawal of the new farm laws,” Rajewal said. Referring to the Centre’s offer to amend the contentious laws, another farmer leader, Darshan Pal, asked as to why the government was agreeing to make changes in the legislations now after initially claiming they will benefit the peasantry.
“We want the government to reinstate the old farm laws even if the government thinks it is not good for farmers,” Pal also said. Thousands of farmers, mostly from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, are protesting at various border points of Delhi against the new farm laws. Several rounds of talks between the Centre and farmers have failed to break the deadlock.
Cops detain Akhilesh
Police took Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav into custody on Monday after party workers led by him broke through a security cordon to sit on a dharna in the heart of the city to oppose the new farm bills.
Yadav was detained for violating section 144 of the CrPC which prevents assembly of five or more people at one spot. With UP police laying a virtual siege to the area around the Samajwadi Party headquarters here, a defiant Yadav sat on a dharna on the road for some time before he was detained by the UP police and bundled into a police van to remove him from the spot. (PTI)
