If reports are to be believed, on Thursday, thousands of farmers headed to the national capital with their echoes for rollback of three farm laws enacted by Parliament in September.
The protest by farmers of Punjab and Haryana called ‘Delhi Chalo’ grew stronger and witnessed high-voltage face-offs between police personnel and the protesting farmers, who forced their way and entered Delhi’s adjoining areas like Panipat, Sirsa, Kurukshetra, Fatehabad and Jind.
The three farm bills because of which the social unrest is happening, actually seek the following :
To break the monopoly of government-regulated mandis and allow farmers to sell directly to private buyers.
Provide a legal framework for farmers to enter into written contracts with companies and produce for them.
And, allow agri-businesses to stock food articles and remove the government’s ability to impose restriction arbitrarily.
While the situation has escalated in the last 12-15 hours, farmers have moved closer to Delhi and Delhi Police has also scaled up deployment of security personnel.
In a statement Delhi Police Commissioner S N Shrivastava, who visited the bordering areas, said “Due to Covid-19 guidelines have been issued in which political gathering is not permitted here and for this, their (the farmers’) request was rejected. If they still make an attempt, we have deployed personnel at the borders to not let them enter the national capital. We are also in contact with Punjab and Haryana Police.”
While all of this has created a lot of unrest, social media is flooded with #BoycottFood and #DelhiChalo tweets. With more than 21k tweets, both the hashtags are trending for more than 24 hours. Have a look at the tweets:
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