After a 12 day march to Delhi, farmers reached the Delhi border around midnight Tuesday and called off their protest after reaching Kisan Ghat, the memorial of Chaudhary Charan Singh. They were allowed to enter the national capital around midnight after police unsealed the border between Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.
“The farmers remained unfazed despite all the hardships. We have been marching for 12 days now, farmers are tired as well. We will continue to demand our rights to the government but for now we are ending the march,” Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) chief Naresh Tikait was quoted by news agency IANS as saying.
ALSO READ: Farmers’ protest leads to traffic disruptions in parts of Delhi
Traffic restriction across Delhi have been lifted after the protest was called and farmers started returning home. However, schools will remain closed in Ghaziabad, which was ordered yesterday due to the protest.
Things took a turn for the worse on Tuesday, when farmers were stopped from entering the national capital, resulting in a violent clash with the police.
The protest march is a part of their ‘Kisan Kranti Padyatra’ to demand loan waiver, subsidised electricity and fuel, pension for farmers above 60 and implementation of recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission.
The march began from Tikait Ghat in Haridwar on September 23 and farmers from places as far as Gonda, Basti and Gorakhpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh and the sugarcane belt of western UP joined the agitation.
At least 30,000 farmers walked and travelled in tractors to Delhi as a part of the march. After police stopped them at Delhi border, angry farmers tried to break the barriers and raised slogans forcing the police to use batons, tear gas shells and water cannons to disperse them. Several protesters and policemen were injured in the clash.
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