Meham (Haryana): Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait on Wednesday said the farmers’ agitation will continue till the time the Centre rolls back the farm laws and provides legal guarantee on minimum support price (MSP).
Referring to cases registered against many farmers in the aftermath of incidents on January 26, 2021 in Delhi, Tikait said, “Farmers are not scared of cases. This agitation will continue so long [as] the Centre does not withdraw these laws and till the time a law is framed giving legal guarantee on MSP.”
“This agitation will go till November-December,” he said, while making it clear that the government should not be mistaken that farmers were going anywhere. “The government thinks farmers will return home in summer. Earlier they thought we would go back home in peak winter. But we are not going anywhere, we have installed fans etc there,” he said, addressing a farmers mahapanchayat here.
Anyone helping farmers in their agitation is facing harassment from government agencies, he alleged.Claiming that the farm laws were not in favour of farmers, Tikait said the next target of the Centre is to create such a situation that “farmers will eventually leave their land”. “It is their plan to take away your land in the next 20 years,” he added. “Their target is to turn farmers into labourers, and once that happens they will get cheap labourers from villages for factories,” Tikait said.
He also thanked farmers of Haryana and khaps (caste council) of the state for supporting this agitation.it also called upon the farmers to be ready to move towards Delhi whenever required.
The farmer leader said that a nationwide movement against the farm laws has started, and the youth have a big responsibility now. Tikait said the country will be saved when slogans of “Jai Ram” and “Jai Bhim” are raised together.
Hundreds of farmers are camping near Delhi’s borders since November last year demanding that the Centre repeal the three contentious farm laws. Enacted in September 2020, the three farm laws have been projected by the Centre as major reforms in the agriculture sector that will remove the middlemen and allow farmers to sell their produce anywhere in the country.
The protesting farmers, on the other hand, have expressed apprehension that the new laws would pave the way for eliminating the safety cushion of the minimum support price and do away with the mandi (wholesale market) system, leaving them at the mercy of big corporates.
