Scores of Karnal farmers head to Tikri; nationwide stir on May 26

Women from Punjab and Haryana join the farmers protesting against new farm laws, at Tikri border, in New Delhi. File pic/AFP

Scores of farmers from Karnal in Haryana on Sunday left for Tikri on the state’s border with Delhi and the site where farmers have been sitting in protest since last November, demanding a repeal of the Centre’s three agricultural laws.

“We’re headed with thousands of vehicles from Karnal. Every week we will take people from one district to the protest site in order to maintain gathering there,” Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) President Gurnam Singh said. “We are doing this to show the government that we are still awake and our protest has not lost steam,” he added.

The BKU has also planned to hold a protest from May 28 in Patiala, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh’s home constituency, against his government’s ‘failure’ to tackle Covid-19. Singh urged the BKU not to hold the sit-in, as their three-day protest may turn into a super-spreader. He urged farmers not to act “irresponsibly” and endanger their own lives.

Oppn backs May 26 protest

Twelve major opposition parties on Sunday extended their support to a countrywide protest call given by the Samyukta Kisan Morcha on May 26, marking six months of the farmers protest against the farm laws.

In a joint statement issued by Congress’s Sonia Gandhi, former PM H D Devegowda, NCP chief Sharad Pawar and chief ministers Mamata Banerjee, Uddhav Thackeray, M K Stalin and Hemant Soren said the Centre must stop being obdurate and immediately resume talks with farmer leaders and repeal the three farm laws.

A stir brews in Hisar, 3,000 riot cops called

Nearly 3,000 personnel of the Rapid Action Force have been called to Hisar district of Haryana, as farmers have planned a protest outside the residence of inspector general of police today, reported NDTV. The protest is against the filing of criminal cases against 350 farmers in Hisar. The farmers, booked under charges of murder, rioting unlawful assembly or spreading the coronavirus infection, are among the anti-farm laws agitators.

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