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News Desk: A group of men claiming to be local residents Friday clashed with the farmers, who are sitting at the Singhu border protesting against the three farm laws, and tried to enter the protest site. The police had to intervene and lobbed tear gas to disperse the clashing units. Several policemen, including Delhi Police SHO (Alipur) Pradeep Paliwal, and protesters have been injured in the clashes.
This comes after locals staged a protest against farmers on Thursday demanding their removal from Singhu border, complaining that the two-month-long agitation has made their daily commute difficult. Hundreds of Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) members stayed put on the Delhi-Meerut Expressway on Friday as the crowd swelled there overnight, notwithstanding the Ghaziabad administration’s ultimatum to vacate the UP Gate protest site.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi Friday said the farmers’ protests will spread to big cities if the government acts rigid and does not repeal the three contentious farm laws. “Most farmers, except the ones in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, haven’t understood the (farm) Bill completely. The government should know that these protests will not stop here. This agitation will spread from here to the big cities because it is not only the farmers who have been robbed of their livelihood. It is going to create instability which is not good for the country,” he said at a press conference.
On a call of the BKU, more farmers from western Uttar Pradesh districts such as Meerut, Baghpat, Bijnor, Muzaffarnagar, Moradabad and Bulandshahr reached the UP Gate by early morning to join the stir, even as the security forces at the protest site thinned out overnight. A confrontation was building up at the UP Gate in Ghazipur even as frequent power cuts were witnessed on Thursday evening at the protest site, where BKU members, led by Rakesh Tikait, are staying put since November 28 last year.
Meanwhile, leaders of 18 Opposition parties boycotted the President’s customary address to a joint sitting of Parliament ahead of the Budget session in solidarity with farmer unions who have been protesting the three recently-enacted farm laws at Delhi’s borders. Responding to their joint statement, Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Pralhad Joshi made an appeal to leaders to attend, saying “the government is ready to discuss all issues threadbare”.
