The farmers at Jantar Mantar have vacated it. They should follow the rules in future, too
Wiser sense seems to have finally prevailed upon the farmers agitating at Jantar Mantar, 200 of whom had been camping at the protest site for a ‘Kisan Sansad’ (farmers’ parliament) since July 22 when the monsoon session of Parliament got underway. As this session is scheduled to conclude on August 13 and the police had given them permission for the sit-in only till August 9, the protesters displayed sound counsel this time round and returned to their old protest site at the Capital’s borders. The planned return journey to the borders from a stone’s throw away from Parliament House, and that too less than a week before the Independence Day celebrations, had the police on toes to ensure against any untoward incident. It may be recalled that certain hooligan elements from among the mass of protesting farmers had run amok at the ramparts of the Red Fort on January 26. Hundreds of farmers have made Delhi’s borders their home since November 2020 with the demand that the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, Farmers’ (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act be rolled back and a new law made to guarantee the minimum support price.
The fact that a few of the State Governments lent support to the farmers’ cause notwithstanding, the Union Government, which has held 11 rounds of formal dialogue with the leaders of the protestors, has maintained that the laws are pro-farmer and won’t be repealed. On Monday evening, saying that they won’t seek any extension of the dharna permission granted to them, the protesters ended their ‘Kisan Sansad’ in the New Delhi district after passing a “no-confidence motion” against the Narendra Modi-led Union Government and said that they would press for the resignation of the Modi Government at the Capital’s border points of Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur and elsewhere across the country. Reiterating this point, the office-bearers of the joint farmers’ union said that the protests will continue “in full steam” and that they had respected all the conditions of the permission given to them for holding the protest peacefully since July 22. Of course, every divergent opinion has the right to be heard in a democracy but these protestors must take care to ensure against indulging in any sort of anarchic or unruly behaviour anymore.