POLICE in the northern state of Punjab detained hundreds of farmers and used bulldozers to tear down their temporary camps in a border area where they had protested for more than a year to demand better crop prices.
The farmers had camped on the border with adjoining Haryana since last February, when security forces halted their march towards the capital, New Delhi, to press for legally-backed guarantees of more state support for crops.
“We did not need to use any force because there was no resistance,” Nanak Singh, a senior police officer, said about Wednesday night’s clearance action, according to ANI news agency.
“The farmers cooperated well and they sat in buses themselves.”
The farmers had been given prior notice, he added.
Media said among the hundreds detained were farmers’ leaders Sarwan Singh Pandher and Jagjit Singh Dallewal, the latter carried away in an ambulance as he had been on an indefinite protest fast for months.
“On one hand, the government is negotiating with the farmer organisations.
“On the other hand, it is arresting them,” Rakesh Tikait, a spokesman for farmer group Bhartiya Kisan Union, said on X.
Punjab’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party, which authorised the eviction, said it stood by the farmers in their demands, but asked them to take up their grievances with the federal government.
Federal government officials met the farmers’ leaders on Wednesday, said Fatehjung Singh Bajwa, the vice-president of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Punjab.
“It is clear that this arrest is a deliberate attempt to disrupt the ongoing dialogue between farmers and BJP leadership,” he added in a post on X. — Reuters
