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Polls are scheduled to take place in Jhansi on February 20, and just a week before that farmers’ umbrella body Sanyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) visited the region in Uttar Pradesh on February 13, 2022 to ask citizens to “punish” the ruling party for farmer grievances.
During a press conference, SKM leaders spoke about the anger in the farming community regarding the recent bail of Lakhimpur Kheri accused Ashish Mishra. Mishra and his accomplices were accused of mowing down peacefully protesting farmers in Tikonia village of Kheri district. As per an SIT report, the incident was not a chance happening but a planned conspiracy. Therefore, farmers had added the sacking of Ashish’s father Union Minister Ajay Mishra from the Cabinet to their list of demands. However, this demand was not addressed by the central government in previous talks.
“Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath threatened farmers by talking about cooling the heat and now has done the work of sprinkling salt on the wounds of farmers by giving bail to Mishra,” said SKM leader Hannan Mollah during the conference.
Similarly, the other seven-member committee members, namely – Yogendra Yadav, Shivkumar Sharma (Kakka), Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) State President Rajveer Singh Jadon, Bundelkhand Farmers Union (BFU) President Vimal Sharma and Kisan Sangharsh Samiti (KSS) President Dr Sunilam, voiced the need to “defeat” the BJP to keep the contentious farm laws from being reintroduced.
Leaders said the BJP-government failed on its written agreement drafted on December 9, 2021 regarding MSP, Compensation to farmers and other demands. As many as 550 farmers organisations across India condemned this failure on January 31 during the ‘Vishwasghat Diwas’. The Mission UP launched in the state is similarly meant to inform people about this news. For this, around 50 farmer organisations in UP have begun village-level meetings to ask people to “remove the anti-farmer BJP”. Accordingly, farmers went over the promises made to farmers in the 2022 BJP manifesto and said that the assurances are the same as the ones made in 2017. However, even after five years, the party has only repeated these promises in its ‘Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra’.
Describing the BJP manifesto as a bundle of lies, leaders asked about the purchase of paddy at Minimum Support Price (MSP) and the procurement of potatoes, onions. During the last five years, less than a third of the paddy production was procured by the government. The situation in wheat was even worse and less than one bag was procured in six bags of production, said farmers.
“Facing famine, migration in Bundelkhand, farmers also did not get MSP of pulses and oilseeds,” said Sharma.
Similarly, there has been no progress on the Ken-Betwa river link project under the National Perspective Plan. The project would have transferred the water from Betwa river in UP to the drought-prone Bundelkhand region, including Jhansi. However, the project requiring ₹ 45,000 cr had not made any progress although all irrigation projects in and around Jhansi were stopped.
As for promises of free electricity for irrigation, farmer leaders said that this was another reused assurance from the 2017 manifesto where the party resolved to arrange for adequate electricity to all fields at low rates.
“In the last five years, there was not enough electricity. The rates increased from above. UP’s electricity rates are the highest in India,” said Jadon.
He said that the Yogi-led government increased the rate of rural metered electricity from ₹ 1 per unit to ₹ 2 per unit from farmers for tube wells. There was an unexpected increase in the fixed charge from ₹ 30 to ₹ 70. Charges for unmetered connections increased from ₹ 100 to ₹ 170.
Leaders said that farmers – who were forced to stay awake all night to save their crops from stray animals – will vote to teach a lesson to the BJP.
Related:
Lakhimpur Kheri case: Farmers remain enraged by Mishra’s bail
Lakhimpur Kheri case: Ashish Mishra gets bail!
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