Learning from their lessons against the protesting farmers who pushed their way across the barriers and blockades put up on the roads leading to the National Capital, the police have come up with novel tactics to peter out their advance towards the protest sites yet again.

Farmers had earlier used the sheer power of their tractors to break through the barricades and other obstacles in their march towards Delhi. Not to take any chances of a recurrence, the police have a few innovative methods up their sleeves to check their advance—iron spikes and wooden boards with big nails cemented on to the roads.

Also, the iron barricades have been further fortified by concertina wires, double layers of concrete slabs further strengthened by pouring in a concrete mix between them to make them difficult to move even by tractors once the concrete solidifies.

Earlier, police had dug up trenches across the roads and even parked buses and other heavy vehicles to prevent the farmers from moving towards Singhu, Tikri and other borders, but could not succeed.

The protest sites at the Delhi borders now are marked by heavy presence of police and paramilitary forces in riot gear, apart from buses parked across roads to dissuade more farmers from Punjab, Haryana and western UP from going to the protest sites at Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur.

“These iron spikes and nails are tyre-killers used to prevent the entry of tractors into Delhi. We are using these in the backdrop of what happened on January 26 and the violence that followed,” said a senior Delhi Police officer.

Police have also deployed drones to keep an eagle eye on any trouble-makers. The force is also conducting intensive checking of vehicles at the Delhi borders, resulting in massive traffic snarls at the entry points to the national capital.

But then, the police do not want to take any chances after the events that followed the “Republic Day tractor rally” and the call by the protesting farmers for a “chakka jam” on Saturday.

Thousands of farmers have been protesting at the Delhi borders since 26 November demanding that the three farm laws are repealed and legislation for the minimum support system for their crops.

The farmers feel that the three laws would leave them vulnerable to the big corporate houses and do away with the wholesale market system.