The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) may have recalled dharnas at 18 places following yesterday’s police crackdown, but the farmers are in no mood to relent as the outfit has repositioned its protest to target Aam Aadmi Party state leaders.
Morcha leaders have said that it will now be “SKM vs AAP government”. “They exhibited their strength yesterday by clamping down on farmers, who wanted to go to Chandigarh for a peaceful dharna. Now, we will not allow their 94 MLAs to move out of their houses,” a morcha leader said.
“The BJP-led Central Government won’t allow farmers to exercise their democratic right to protest in the national capital. Following the same model, the AAP government prevented us from protesting in the state capital. We had only said that we will stage a sit-in at Sector 34 in Chandigarh. There was no programme to block roads or rail traffic. But they have chosen to create an anti-farmer public sentiment. It is now our time to show strength by organising dharnas outside the residences of all ministers and MLAs on March 10,” senior SKM leader Prem Bhangu told The Tribune.
“The AAP government has been lying on two things — that we wanted to inconvenience people by blocking roads and our demands were related only to the Centre. We were asking Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann to implement the demands that he himself had agreed upon in December 2023. By arresting our leaders and stopping us from holding a peaceful dharna in the state capital, the CM has put Punjab on the boil,” said Rajinder Singh Deepsinghwala, leader of Kirti Kisan Union.
He added: “There are burning issues that need to be addressed by the state and the Centre. Instead of addressing the issues, the CM first walked out of the March 3 meeting in a huff, and then declared a ‘war’ on us by detaining senior SKM leaders. He is trying to create a divide between rural and urban people, with an aim to turn the latter against the former. We will fight back with full might. No public inconvenience will be caused, but their leaders will not be allowed to move out of their houses.
The attitude of confrontation adopted by farmers towards the AAP government may also prove to be a turning point for the ruling party, where it stands to lose its rural vote bank in an attempt to woo urban voters, who are by and large divided between the Congress and BJP. When AAP stormed to power in the last Assembly elections, winning 92 of the 117 seats, many farmer unions, including some of the leading ones, had unofficially supported it. Thwarting the SKM protest march might have won the AAP some brownie points with traders, businessmen and even urban voters, the morcha, with its 37 farm unions and massive cadre strength, has now trained its guns on the ruling party.
Anandpur Sahib MP Malvinder Singh Kang, who is the chief spokesperson for AAP, however, denied that there was any confrontation between farmers and the ruling party. “Most of our leaders are sons of farmers. How can we get into any confrontation with them? We have only been asking the farmer unions not to disrupt normal life by their protests. As a responsible government, we have to attract investment and promote industrialisation to ensure employment. We are still open to dialogue with them,” he said