Delhi becomes fortress as farmers organise massive protest

Many farmers are walking from nearby states to Delhi, India’s capital, to ask for guaranteed prices for their crops.

In 2020, farmers set up camps at the borders of Delhi to protest against laws that they thought were not good for agriculture.

The protest lasted for a year and many people died. It ended when the government agreed to cancel the laws.

On Monday, the police shot tear gas at them at the Shambhu border between Haryana and Punjab states.

Punjabi farmers want to go to Delhi peacefully, but they are not allowed to pass through Haryana. Fights between police and protesters are happening at the Shambhu border and the situation is still tense.

Farmers plan to keep protesting in Delhi until they get what they want.

The police in Delhi have closed the borders on three sides of the city to prevent a repeat of 2020. Farmers had protested for months and blocked the highways connecting the capital to neighboring states. The movement was viewed as a major challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

Traffic was really bad in Delhi on Tuesday. The authorities changed some routes and closed off some roads, which caused a lot of problems.

So far, two meetings between farm union leaders and government ministers have not been able to solve the problem.

Farmers want guaranteed minimum prices for their crops. This would help them sell most of their produce at government-controlled markets. They are also asking the government to keep its promise of increasing farmers’ income two times.

The march happens a few months before the general elections. Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), wants to win for the third time. Farmers are powerful voters in India and the government wants to make sure they don’t upset them before the elections.

On Monday, government leaders met with farmers for six hours. Both parties agreed on some of the requests, like dropping the charges against protesters from the 2020 protests.

But everyone didn’t agree on the MSP. In 2021, the government said it would create a group to figure out how to guarantee fair prices for all farm products after the farm laws were canceled. The group still needs to give their report.

At the moment, officials have put up barriers, put fences with sharp wire along the border, and added cement blocks to prevent protesters from getting into the city.

The police have said that big groups of people are not allowed to gather in the city, especially at the places where Delhi meets Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. This is where the farmers are planning to go.

The government in Haryana, led by the BJP, has stopped internet services in seven districts until Tuesday.

More than 200 groups of farmers are joining the march. “We will move without causing any trouble and our goal is for the government to hear what we want,” said Sarvan Singh Pandher, the leader of the Punjab Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee, to the ANI news agency.

Farmers and workers’ groups are planning to stop working on February 16 in the countryside. All the stores, markets, and offices in villages will be shut down, and farmers will block important roads all over the country.