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Farmer leader Rakesh Tikait urges voters in Nandigram not to vote for BJP
Way back in 2007-2008, Nandigram had become the epicentre of a farmers' movement that propelled Mamata Banerjee to power in the state in 2011 uprooting the 34 years of Left Front regime.
Farmer leader Rakesh Tikait has urged people residing in Nandigram in East Midnapore not to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party while mounting an attack on the BJP-led Centre.
“There are elections ahead in Bengal. You need not come to Delhi. You ensure that the BJP is defeated in the polls. Don’t vote for them. Vote for only that party which can defeat the BJP,” said Rakesh Tikait, Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader on Saturday.
He was addressing a rally attended by a few hundred people at Nandigram which goes to polls on April 1. Political experts have said that it would be perhaps the most high-pitched poll battles that West Bengal has seen in recent times as chief minister Mamata Banerjee would be taking on her protégé-turned-adversary Suvendu Adhikari, who has been pitted against her by the BJP.
“This movement (farmers’ agitation) has to be spread throughout the country across all districts. You will have to break barriers and barricades. This movement will continue till the time the kala-kanoon (contentious farm laws) is withdrawn,” he said while projecting Nandigram as a citadel of farmers’ movement.
Way back in 2007-2008, Nandigram had become the epicentre of a farmers' movement that propelled Mamata Banerjee to power in the state in 2011 uprooting the 34 years of Left Front regime.
Launching a scathing attack on the BJP government at the Centre, Tikait said that the Union government is paving the way for big companies to come to India which would ultimately sound the death-knell for small farmers and fishermen.
“Big companies, to whom the country is being sold, will come. Companies which are engaged in fishing in seas will come and this would affect the farmers living along the coastline. Then they will come for your ponds and you would be stopped from catching fish even from your pond. A law would be made to stop you just like the way a milkman is being stopped from selling milk even to his neighbour in a can,” he added.
A few lakh farmers have been protesting on the borders of Delhi against the three contentious farm laws for nearly 110 days now.
Samyukt Kisan Morcha leaders arrived in West Bengal on Friday and have been holding rallies (mahapanchayats) and meetings. On Sunday the leaders are scheduled to hold another rally at Singur in Hooghly district.
Nandigram, along with Singur in Hooghly district, are two of the most prestigious Assembly constituencies for the TMC because mass movements against land acquisition in these two constituencies during 2006-08 paved the path for Mamata Banerjee’s political resurrection.
