WEB DESK
The rail roko agitation called by farmers passed off without any untoward incident. The Railway Ministry said, there was minimal impact on running of the trains across the country. Train Movement in all the zones is normal now.
Majority of the zones have reported not a single case of any stoppage of train by the agitators. The Ministry said, few trains were stopped in some areas but now train operation is normal and trains are being operated smoothly.
The ‘rail roko’ (rail blockade) call by farmer unions protesting the Centre’s three agriculture laws on Thursday remained peaceful and did not have much impact in Uttar Pradesh with farmers organising token protests near railway tracks and stations in the state.
Farmers protested in Chitrakoot, Hamipur, Mahoba, Lalitpur, Fatehpur, Amethi and other districts of the state, demanding the repeal of the three contentious laws.
In Banda, farmers squatted on a railway track for some time and left after giving a memorandum addressed to the President regarding their demands, Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Mahendra Pratap Singh Chauhan said. In Chitrakoot, 100 famers were detained while they tried to stop the rail movement, ASP Shailendra Kumar Rai said.
Farm unions said thousands had participated in the nationwide agitation, including protests at a large number of stations in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Telangana, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. Although protesters were detained at several locations, both the unions and the Railways said the protest passed off peacefully, without any incidents of violence.
In Punjab, where farmers blocked rail lines and stations for several weeks last year, the core group of 32 protesting unions laid siege to tracks in at least 40 locations, according to Jagmohan Singh, general secretary of the Bharatiya Kisan Union-Dakaunda. “Farmers peacefully sat on a dharna on railway tracks to convey their anguish,” he said.
Women join
The BKU-Ekta Ugrahan, one of the largest farm unions in the State, which is not part of the 32 unions, said its members blocked the tracks at 22 locations, including Bathinda, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Patiala districts. The Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee, which had refused to lift the earlier blockade of passenger trains even when other unions relented, blocked tracks at over 30 places including Amritsar, Gurdaspur and Kapurthala.
Farmers, supported by khap panchayats, traders and workers unions, blocked rail lines at 44 points across Haryana, with large number of women taking part at Rohtak and Charkhi Dadri districts. Hisar, Sirsa, Jind and Rohtak accounted for more than half the protest sites. In Bahadurgarh, one of the sites of the sit-in agitation for the past two months, farmers blocked railway traffic at five points. Leading the agitation at Patuwas, farmer leader Raju Maan said the farmers were ready to make any sacrifice to get the three farm laws repealed.