Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party government at the Centre over the police setting up barricades and road blocks at farmers' agitation sites on Delhi's borders.
Farmers' protest sites at Delhi's borders have turned into fortresses with the police beefing up security and strengthening barricades.
Iron rods have been hooked between two rows of cement barriers on a flank of the main highway at the Singhu border to further restrict the movement of protesters, agitating against the new farm laws.
Another portion of the highway at the Delhi-Haryana border is practically blocked as a makeshift cement wall has come up there.
At Ghazipur on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border, there are multi-layer barricades to stop the movement of vehicles. Barbed wire has also been put up to keep off people on foot.
"Politics you are awesome. With wall raised on the way and spiked wire, you say let's talk," Yadav said in a tweet in Hindi with hashtag #farmer #nahi-chahiye-BJP (no more BJP).
Farmer unions protesting against the three farm laws on Monday announced a country-wide chakka jam on February 6 when they would block national and state highways for three hours in protest against the Internet suspension in areas near their agitation sites, harassment by authorities, and other issues.
Criticising the budget for 2021-22 presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Parliament on Monday, Yadav said, "The BJP has been reduced to a trading company whose sole job is horse-trading for purchasing MLAs and privatising the assets of the government with the objective of mobilising funds for advancing its electoral interests."
He alleged that the sole aim of the announcements made in the budget was to mobilise funds from the corporate houses for the BJP's coffers.
He said the budget had nothing to offer to the farmers as the outlay for the agriculture and allied sector was insignificant.
The SP chief charged that no new reform measure had been announced in the budget to create fresh jobs. He said the BJP government had been making tall claims on creating fresh jobs while the outlay for the MNREGA had been slashed by 30 per cent. He said this would have an adverse impact on rural households.
Yadav said during the past elections to state assemblies and Parliament, the BJP leaders had promised moon to the farmers but nothing translated on the ground. He said the BJP government failed to honour the promise of increasing the farmers' income by increasing the minimum support price even as the inflation had increased by 31 per cent.