According to the news coming from Gandhinagar, Gujarat, thousands of farmers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state would be coming to Delhi to lend support to the farmers who are protesting at various Delhi borders.
These farmers would be led by a union of around 17 farmers’ federations in Gujarat who have taken this decision. The Gujarat Kisan Sangharsh Samiti has carried out micro-level planning as a part of the support and gather around 10,000 farmers from Gujarat to reach Delhi during the next 15 days.
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Meanwhile, hundreds of farmers from Gujarat have reached the Jaipur-Delhi border and other borders of Delhi to join the protesting farmers. Starting with 150 farmers, 60 more reached the national capital and on Wednesday 80 more farmers joined to show their solidarity.
“It is probably for the first time after Independence that such a large-scale agitation is being held in the country. The three new black laws brought in by the Modi government won’t just hurt the farmers they will also hurt the common man, small traders, poor people and the middle class,” said Pal Ambaliya, chairman of Gujarat Congress Kisan cell.
“We are planning to bring, initially in the first phase, at least 10 farmers each from each tehsils and in the next phase there will be 30 -30 farmers from each tehsil brought in here. In a fortnight’s time, more than 10,000 farmers will be reaching Delhi in support of this agitation,” added Ambaliya.
“We have also planned to carry out various programmes every day. Each day there will be a new surprise programme depicting our protest against the new farm bills. But all these protests will be of non-violent nature and based on Gandhian principles. We are not going to budge from here till the three new bills are reversed,” added Ambaliya.
On Wednesday, for instance, the farmers played the traditional ‘garba’ from Gujarat as a part of the surprise programme at the agitation.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had, on Tuesday, said that agriculture, dairy and fisheries sectors have prospered in Gujarat over the last two decades due to minimum interference from the Government and Gujarat has empowered farmers and cooperatives.
He had said that farmers are being misled about the agriculture reforms.
He was in Kutch where he unveiled various developmental projects and lauded the Gujarat Government for introducing many farmer-friendly schemes in the last twenty years.
(With agency inputs)