Farmers To Stage Protest At Delhi’s Jantar Mantar

Farmers will hold peaceful demonstrations at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, demanding scrapping of the new farm laws and no protester will go to Parliament where the monsoon session is underway, a farm union leader said on Tuesday.

Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Mahasangh national president Shiv Kumar Kakka told PTI after a meeting with Delhi Police officers that from July 22, 200 farmers, wearing identification badges, will go to Jantar Mantar every day from the Singhu border to hold the protest.

The Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), an umbrella body of over 40 farmer unions spearheading the agitation against the agriculture laws, had planned that around 200 peasants will protest outside Parliament every day from July 22 during the monsoon session.

The monsoon session of Parliament started on Monday and is scheduled to conclude on August 13.

“We informed the police that every day 200 farmers will go to Jantar Mantar from the Singhu border in buses during the monsoon session. It will be a peaceful demonstration and protesters will have identification badges. When police asked us to reduce the number of protesters, we told them to focus on the law-and-order situation and also gave assurance that the protest will be peaceful,” Kakka said. No written communication has been received from the police yet, he said.

“Police were informed that the protest will be peaceful. We will sit at Jantar Mantar from 10am to 5pm. Nobody will go to Parliament and neither we will allow any political person to come to the protest,” he said.

The SKM has already stated that there are no plans of laying siege to Parliament. “The protest will be peaceful and disciplined,” it had said in a statement.

Thousands of farmers from across the country have been agitating at Delhi’s borders against the three farm laws that they claim will do away with the minimum support price system, leaving them at the mercy of big corporations.