Chandigarh: As campaigning for parliamentary polls intensifies in Punjab, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidates are facing protests from farmer bodies in the state’s rural areas.
Several farmer outfits affiliated with the Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) have decided to target the BJP candidates forcing them to answer their questions. Several villages have also decided against allowing BJP candidates to campaign.
On Monday, for instance, BJP’s Faridkot candidate and singer-turned-politician Hans Raj Hans wasn’t allowed to campaign in a village in Gidderbaha after angry farmers confronted him. Hans was heckled and told that he would be allowed to move only after he could satisfactorily answer their questions.
The same day, BJP’s Gurdaspur candidate Dinesh Kumar Babbu had his campaign at Fatehgarh Churian disrupted by a group of protesting Bhartiya Kisan Union members.
Babbu was at pains to explain that due to the model code of conduct currently in place, no decision concerning farmers could be taken.
Meanwhile, after BJP leader Arvind Khanna faced their wrath at Barnala, he accused the protesters of being members of the ruling Aam Aadmi Party.
The protests come a fortnight after the farmer umbrella body Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) released a questionnaire to farmers as a concerted effort to “hold the ruling BJP government accountable”. Similar protests were also held in Haryana.
It also comes two months after farmers from Punjab launched their second round of protests demanding a legal provision for minimum support price — a government market intervention that ensures that farmers get a minimum price for their produce.
On their part, farmer bodies said that they had invited BJP leaders for an open discussion in Chandigarh but that “nobody came”.taranj
Farmer union leaders put up photos of BJP leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and state BJP present president Sunil Jakhar on chairs at the meeting venue.
“This shows they have no answers to our questions,” farmer leader, Jagjit Singh Dallewal, told the media.
Punjab votes in the last phase of the seven-phase parliamentary election on 1 June.
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‘Hidden conspiracy’
In their questionnaire, the SKM — the organisation that spearheaded the 2020-21 farmers’ protest against the Narendra Modi government’s controversial and now-repealed farm laws — had listed several queries. This included questions such as why the central BJP government has not yet brought a law guaranteeing MSP; why was no action taken against BJP leader and former union minister Ajay Mishra Teni, whose son has been accused of running over protesting farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri in October 2021, and why the cases registered against farmers during the first round of the protest has not yet been withdrawn.
It also questions the manner in which the Haryana Police dealt with the renewed farmers’ protest earlier this year. One Punjab farmer, Shubhkaran Singh, allegedly died in the police action.
When protesting farmers were demanding answers from Hans Raj Hans Monday, the BJP leader said he had “just become an MP” during the first round of farmers’ protests and he had “done his best to help” them.
Hans had been a BJP MP from Delhi’s North West constituency during the protests.
“I did not know much, nor did I have any position of power or authority to do anything. I did offer to set up a meeting between farmer leaders and the prime minister and had even begun making efforts in that direction, but farmers decided against meeting him,” he told the protesters.
Several BJP leaders have been facing protests in the state. On 6 April, former diplomat and BJP’s Amritsar candidate Taranjit Singh Sandhu’s roadshow was halted by protesting farmers and even pelted with stones. The incident led to the former US envoy being provided Y+ security cover from the Central Reserved Police Force (CRPF).
On 12 April, Hans was surrounded and heckled as he was leaving a campaign venue. Another agitation against former bureaucrat and BJP’s Bathinda candidate Parampal Kaur on 17 April led to a clash between the protesters and the police.
After her cavalcade was shown black flags while campaigning earlier this month, four-time Patiala MP Preneet Kaur, the BJP’s candidate from the seat, said everyone had a right to protest in a democracy.
“There are people who will oppose me and then there are those who support me. The final verdict will depend on what happens on voting day,” Kaur, wife of former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh, told ThePrint.
BJP’s Punjab chief Sunil Jakhar claimed last month there was a “hidden conspiracy” behind the renewed farmers’ protests. “The farmers leading the protest are the ones who aren’t going to experiment with growing anything except wheat and paddy, so why fool others? There is a hidden conspiracy behind these protests,” he said.
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