However, after walking for a few metres, they were stopped at the barricading by Haryana Police.
“We will first identify them (farmers) and then we can allow them to go ahead. We have a list of the names of 101 farmers, and they are not those people – they are not letting us identify them – they are moving ahead as a mob,” a Haryana police official deployed at the site told news agency ANI.
This comes as the farmers had to suspend their protest on Friday after some of them suffered injuries due to tear gas shells fired by security personnel, who stopped them at the Punjab-Haryana border. The farmers have been pressing for various demands, including a legal guarantee for Minimum Support Price (MSP).
“The police are asking for identity cards, but they should give a guarantee that they would allow us to go Delhi. They say that there is no permission to go to Delhi, then why we should give the identity cards. We will give identity cards if they allow us to go to Delhi,” said a protesting farmer at Shambhu border.
Besides MSP, the farmers are also demanding a farm debt waiver, pension for farmers and farm labourers, no hike in electricity tariff, withdrawal of police cases (against farmers), and “justice” for the victims of the 2021 Lakhimpur Kheri violence.Reinstatement of the Land Acquisition Act, 2013 and compensation to the families of farmers who died during the previous agitation in 2020-21 are also part of their demands. (more to come)
