One day after they attended the Muzaffarnagar mahapanchayat to support BKU leader Rakesh Tikait, hundreds of farmers from villages in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana showed up at the Ghazipur protest site on Saturday in tractors and trucks loaded with rations and bottles. of water.
Subodh Kumar, a farmer from Khanjarpur who came to the Delhi-UP border with three friends, bought tarps and cables along the way and pitched a tent near the flyover at the border.
“We are here to stay. My wife and children are taking care of the farm now. He also cried when he saw Tikait crying on TV. The police can’t arrest him, he did nothing wrong. I have some vegetables and rice with me… I’ll cook it. or I will donate it in the langar. We will also help the farmers with the seva by cleaning roads, “he said.
With the numbers increasing at the border, workers from BKU and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) also sent water and food for farmers. Deshpal Singh, a member of BKU, who runs one of the langar in NH-24, said: “Before, we were cooking for more than 1,000 people. Now, I think there are more than 3000 farmers. Members of my family have also joined the protest.
Everyone is giving us rations and we have called in two more cooks from Shamli to help us prepare the langar. “
Singh said that his brothers send five tractors from Baghpat and Shamli every day, with 5,000 cans of water in each vehicle.
“There is a shortage of water here. The Delhi government is helping, but now we have more protesters, ”he said.
A group of RLD workers, the farmers said, also shipped vegetables from Muzaffarnagar and nearby villages.
Farmers on the Ghazipur border (Express Photo by Amit Mehra)
Since the Delhi Police and UP Police have sealed off almost four routes leading to the border, farmers travel on the Amroha-Ghaziabad or Mohan Nagar road in Ghaziabad to reach the protest site, passing through three layers of barricades in the highway and other roads.
On Saturday afternoon, the roads adjacent to the overpass were packed with protesters and langar stalls.
Shouting slogans in support of Tikait, the farmers said they had called their family and friends to the border. “We don’t want Tikait sahab to cry again. The police will continue to harass us; They have blocked almost all the roads, but they cannot stop the farmers who are ready to protest here for a year. I told my friends to come and join the protest. We will make weekly trips to tend our farms, or our wives and children will stay there. For now, we need more people here to fight, ”said Rakesh Gautam, a farmer from Shamli.
Anil Chaudhary, a sugar cane farmer from Meerut who joined the protest early in the morning, said: “They told us to get vegetables from our village for the langar. We come from Mohan Nagar because the police won’t let anyone in from other directions. We have also told our friends to bring food along that route ”.
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