Farmers Plan to Protest outside Parliament during Monsoon session

Highlights: 

• Farmers protests to intensify during the monsoon session of the Parliament.

• The SamyuktKisan Morcha is going to send warning letters to MPs of opposition parties to ensure that they raise their issues on all days of monsoon session of parliament. 

• There is a large tractor convoy being planned from Pilibhit in UP and more farmers are reaching the protest sites. 

Farmer unions who have been protesting against the centre’s three farm laws, enacted last year, have now decided to take their protest a step forward by marching to the Parliament during the monsoon session. Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) has said in a press release that they will send a warning letter to opposition parties on July, 17 to ensure that the parliament’s monsoon session is used to support the farmer’s protest.  

They are planning to intensify their protests and said that they will move protestors along with their tractors to the parliament and also organize demonstrations across the country.  A group of 200 protestors will demonstrate outside the Parliament every day during this session. These protests by SKM are likely to be met with resistance from Delhi police fearing how the tractor rally by the farmers on Republic day, 2021 turned out to be violent when protestors clashed with policemen and breached into the Red Fort. 

Samyukta Kisan Morcha is an umbrella body of more than 40 farmer’s unions to coordinate their protest against three farm acts initiated in September last year. They have refused the Government’s offer to put the farm laws on hold to look into the problems that farmers may have had with any specific provisions and have demanded that the Government should repeal the legislation entirely. 

The farmers say the laws enacted by central government to liberalize the farm trade will leave them helpless and at the mercy of large corporations and threaten their livelihoods. While the government believes these laws are necessary to modernize India’s agriculture sector and increase the productivity, which will, in turn help to uplift the overall economy. The changes in the farm trade are envisaged to bring investment and growth in the farm sector, which supports the half the population of India. 

The government is ready for talks to bring changes in certain provisions of the laws, but not to repeal. The centre has not given a single reason as to why these laws cannot or should not be repealed, SKM said in statement. 

There have been 11 rounds of talks between the farmer unions and the government with no point of agreement. The government had offered to freeze the laws for 18 months but this proposal was rejected by the farmers. 

Gurnam Singh Charuni, a SKM leader, said that they have already been waiting long enough and this protest during the monsoon session of the Parliament will be an ultimatum.