E-Paper
BKU in confrontation mode
ADOPTING A confrontationist posture, members of the Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) staged a dharna at the district magistrate?s office and then took out a procession and blocked traffic movement at Golghar on Tuesday. Later additional commissioner visited the site and accepted the memorandum to be forwarded to the president of India. Earlier, the district administration and BKU leaders came in confrontation mood after district magistrate Dr Hariom refused to visit the BKU panchayat to take their memorandum.
ADOPTING A confrontationist posture, members of the Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) staged a dharna at the district magistrate’s office and then took out a procession and blocked traffic movement at Golghar on Tuesday. Later additional commissioner visited the site and accepted the memorandum to be forwarded to the president of India.
Earlier, the district administration and BKU leaders came in confrontation mood after district magistrate Dr Hariom refused to visit the BKU panchayat to take their memorandum. Instead, he invited five BKU members to the collectorate office for submitting the memorandum but BKU men categorically rejected the proposal and were adamant that the DM himself should come to the panchayat.
The BKU panchayat started on Monday at the district magistrate office premises and it was expected that by 3 pm the DM would come there to take the memorandum. When it did not happen so and instead the DM invited BKU members to hand over the memorandum at around 6 pm, the partymen got very agitated and decided to stage a round the clock dharna at the DM’s office.
The dharna started on Monday evening continued till 1 pm on Tuesday but no district official came forward to take the memorandum, which further aggravated the problem.
Later, BKU members took out a procession and blocked traffic at Indira crossing.
Later, succumbing to the pressure, additional commissioner BR Shastri came there and took the memorandum.
Divisional coordinator of BKU Anoop Singh and district unit president Lal Singh said the dharna was organised on the directive of their leader Mahendra Singh Tikait to demand exemption of agriculture and food sectors from the purview of World Trade Organization (WTO). They said it was the impact of trader liberalisation and faulty WTO policies that farmers were committing suicide in every state. Farmers were paying the cost of liberalisation by sacrificing their lives, they said.
They demanded that multinational companies should not be allowed to dictate terms and demanded to revoke the hike in prices of petrol and diesel. They condemned import of wheat from Australia and other countries at higher rate in comparison to the support price for the farmers in the country.
