Train services remained disrupted for the second consecutive day on Thursday due to the ongoing ‘rail roko’ protest led by farmers near the Shambhu Border railway station.
Efforts to persuade the protesting farmers to lift their sit-in from the railway track were unsuccessful for the second day in a row.
The farmers, affiliated with Kisan Mazdoor Morcha and Samyukt Kisan Morcha (Non-Political), had blocked the Delhi-Ambala-Amritsar railway track near the Shambhu border on Wednesday. They are demanding the release of three fellow protesters—Navdeep Singh, Anish Khatkar, and Gurkirat Singh—who were arrested by the Haryana Police in March.
Sarwan Singh Pandher, a farm union leader, stated that the ‘rail roko’ protest was initiated to oppose the arrest of these three farmers. He claimed that the farmers were falsely implicated, and the protest would persist until their release.
Anish Khatkar has been on a hunger strike in jail for the past 28 days in protest against his arrest, Pandher added. Although the farmers had initially planned a ‘rail roko’ protest on April 9, they postponed it following assurances from Punjab and Haryana authorities that the arrested farmers would be released by April 16. However, Navdeep, Anish, and Gurkirat remain in custody.
The ongoing protest has disrupted the services of nearly 80 trains from the Ambala and Ferozepur divisions. Most of these trains have been rerouted via Chandigarh or Dhuri in Sangrur.