India / Will block Delhi-Noida border, date not decided yet: Rakesh Tikait

New Delhi: Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait on Tuesday warned that farmers protesting against the three contentious central agricultural laws would block the border between Delhi and its satellite town of Noida in the neighbouring Uttar Pradesh.

“Yes, we will block the Delhi-Noida border. The committee is yet to decide the date,” Tikait, the BKU spokesperson said, according to news agency ANI. Tikait and his supporters have been camping at the Delhi-UP Ghazipur border since the early days of the agitation.

The committee, the Sanyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), is an umbrella body of more than 40 farmers’ unions, which is spearheading the protests against the three laws on the borders of Delhi since November 26 last year.

Farmers belonging to Bharatiya Kisan Union (Bhanu) vacated the Delhi-Noida Chilla border on January 27, after blocking it for 58 days, in the wake of violent clashes between a section of farmers and the Delhi Police in the national capital on Republic Day.

A day later, as the police moved in to vacate the Ghazipur border, Tikait broke down. The video of his tears went viral, prompting farmers from nearby states to join the BKU leader at the protest site, thus swelling the numbers which had started to decrease in the wake of Jan. 26 violence. Since then, Tikait has emerged as the face of the movement, addressing 'mahapanchayats' (farmers’ meeting) in various cities across the country. Recently, he also went to poll-bound West Bengal and addressed a mahapanchayat in the assembly constituency of Nandigram, from where chief minister Mamata Banerjee will contest, and urged voters to not vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose government at the Centre passed the legislations last September.

The BKU leader has also repeatedly warned that ‘lakhs of tractors will enter Delhi’ and gherao Parliament till a legal guarantee on Minimum Support Price (MSP) is given and the three laws are repealed.