The farmers from Punjab have been protesting against the Farm Bill in Delhi. Today, they resorted to violence as PM Modi speech was addressed to nine crore farmers. After vandalising many Reliance Jio towers in Punjab and almost crushing policemen under their tractors in Uttrakhand, reports have now emerged that at least four locations in Punjab, where PM Narendra Modi’s contact with farmers was being screened, were ransacked by ‘farmers’.
Punjab’s Bathinda, Kotkapura, Fazilka and Jalandhar, where BJP leaders arranged a live screening of the event, faced acts of vandalism and disturbance by protesting ‘farmers.’ Interestingly, the demonstration was led by members of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) in several of these venues.
The BJP case at Bathinda’s Ram Chandra Market on Amrik Singh Road had to be completed within 15 minutes of its launch, as agitating farmers hurled up slogans and ransacked the site, leaving at least five party members wounded. BJP District President Vinod Kumar Binta said the farmers hurled chairs and destroyed pictures of former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of which the event was arranged and also to listen to the PM live.
The video clip of the incident shows demonstrators smashing tables, tossing BJP flags and raising slogans like ‘Modi Sarkar Murdabad,’ ‘Kale Kanoon Radd Karo.’
Binta said, “We built a tent near my office in the Ram Chandra Market. We had to celebrate the birthday of former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee and listen to the PM live as well. We had just begun the programme when the farmers came inside the tent and began to lift slogans against us, flipped the chairs and even destroyed them.
BJP legal cell co-convenor Ravinder Gupta was one of those who suffered injuries. Gupta, he said, had 22 stitches on his neck. The police rushed to the spot and resorted to a mild lathi charge to monitor the situation, the BJP leaders said.
While the police had erected a barricade on the road leading to the site, members of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Ugrahan) and Dodhi (Milkmen) Union, Bathinda Section, came to the site in large numbers and demolished the barricades, raised slogans and protested.
BJP national general secretary Tarun Chugh said: “Complete anarchy is prevailing in Punjab where law and order are in the hands of goons and police have become a silent and helpless onlooker.”
In 2019, the BKU assisted the then Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Ram Vilas Paswan, after asking the Punjab Chief Minister, Captain Amarinder Singh, to abolish the Arhitya scheme and to ensure direct payments to farmers as provided for under the current farm legislation.