Farmers protesting on the Delhi borders have been given permission to enter the national capital and hold their tractor rally on 26 January, i.e., Republic Day.
Farmer leaders had claimed that the authorities had given them permission for their parade after a meeting with the Delhi Police on Saturday. The Delhi Police on Sunday came out with statements confirming the same once the final route of the procession was chalked out.
The green signal from the police came after the farmers promised a peaceful rally that will move along a road encircling the city and not overlap with the day’s traditional big parade on Rajpath that terminates at the iconic Red Fort.
“We had about five or six rounds of talks with the farmers. We kept requesting them not to take out a rally on Republic Day but they were adamant so we had to agree. We have allowed them to take out their tractors from three locations in Delhi. This will be a challenging task but Delhi Police can manage the situation,” said Special CP (Intelligence) Dipendra Pathak, adding, “The routes that the tractor rally is scheduled to take will have adequate security arrangements. We will sit with the farmer leaders once again to chalk out all the finer details.”
The Delhi Police has said that the tractor march will start only after the Republic Day parade ends in Central Delhi. They have also claimed that intelligence agencies have been getting inputs regarding threats to disrupt the tractor rally. “More than 300 Twitter handles have been generated from Pakistan to create confusion,” said police officials.
Swaraj India leader Yogendra Yadav, who has joined hands with the farmer protests, claimed on Saturday that farmers will take out the ‘Kisan Gantantra Parade’ on 26 January with the barricades at Delhi’s border being removed and farmers being allowed to enter the national capital. “We will take out a historical and peaceful parade and it will have no effect on the Republic Day parade or the security arrangements,” he said.
The farmer groups had called for a nationwide protest on Republic Day with the only point of contention being the national capital due to its Republic Day parade. The farmers› plans had also hit a roadblock when the Centre approached the Supreme Court through the Delhi Police, claiming that the march would dishonour the country›s pride.
The Centre withdrew its plea earlier this week after the Supreme Court said that “it is a police matter”. The police have the ‘authority’ to deal with the issue pertaining to the proposed tractor march in Delhi on the Republic Day, said a bench comprising Chief Justice S.A. Bobde and Justices A.S. Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian.
Thousands of farmers, mostly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, have been camping at several points on the Delhi border since 28 November to demand a repeal of the three farm laws and a legal guarantee on minimum support price for their crops.
Enacted in September last year, the three laws have been projected by the Centre as major reforms in the agriculture sector that will remove middlemen and allow farmers to sell their produce anywhere in the country. However, the protesting farmers have expressed their apprehension that the new laws will eliminate the safety cushion of the MSP and the ‹mandi› (wholesale market) system, leaving them at the mercy of big corporate houses.