Farmers open service road at Ghazipur border closed for 11 months
Darpan News Desk IANS, 21 Oct, 2021 10:35 AM
New Delhi, Oct 21 (IANS) Farmers protesting on the Ghazipur border at Delhi for the last 11 months against the three farm laws enacted by the Centre last year, have started to open the service lane to ease the traffic. They said it is the police who have closed the road and not them. Farmers belonging to the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) on Thursday started removing the tents built on the service road to start the traffic movement.
Farmers have claimed that wrong information is being spread about them in the Supreme Court. "We had never closed the road, we wanted to go to Delhi. The police did not allow us to go across the border," the farmers said.
The farmers have removed the media centre on the Ghazipur border, while they have parked their vehicles near the police barricade.
Meanwhile, a meeting of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) is going on at the Singhu border, in which a decision can be taken to open the roads.
The Delhi Meerut Expressway from the Ghaziabad side to Delhi is completely closed due to the farmers' agitation for the last 11 months, due to which lakhs of people are facing problems in commuting every day.
Earlier on Thursday, the Supreme Court reiterated that farmer groups have the right to protest, but they cannot keep roads blocked indefinitely. The top court sought a response from the Samyukt Kisan Morcha, an umbrella body of farmer unions, and other farmer unions on a petition filed by a Noida woman.
She reached Chandigarh, the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, by air in the morning from where she headed straight to her daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's cottage located amid forests of pine and cedar on the suburbs of the Himachal Pradesh capital.
Channi took oath of office along with his two deputies -- one a Jat Sikh and another belonging to the Hindu community -- at a simple ceremony here in the Punjab capital that was delayed for 20 minutes owing to the late arrival of party leader Rahul Gandhi.
Jasbir Singh Virk, president of Bhartiya Sikh Sangthan, has underlined the need to intensify the ongoing farmers' agitation and said that there was a need to shore up strength at the Delhi borders.
Punjab BJP President Ashwani Sharma told IANS that to control infighting in its party state unit, the Congress leadership made Channi ji (Charanjit Singh Channi) the Punjab Chief Minister but insulted the Dalit community by not allowing him to lead the party in the upcoming state Assembly polls.
The government and drug controller's office will have to take a decision on the third booster dose based on data and cases as times goes on and including how effective the vaccine is on the Delta virus variant, he added.
