Farmers squatted on rail tracks and staged sit-ins on platforms at several places in western Uttar Pradesh on Monday as part of the Samyukt Kisan Morcha’s rail roko protest over the Lakhimpur Kheri violence in which eight people, including four farmers, died on October 3.
During the rail roko agitation, the protesters demanded the removal of Union minister of state for home Ajay Kumar Mishra ‘Teni’, whose son has been arrested in the Lakhimpur Kheri case.
Groups of farmers staged sit-ins at railways stations and tracks in Meerut, Shamli, Muzaffarnagar, Saharanpur, Hapur and Bijnor districts of western Uttar Pradesh, affecting the plying of over a dozen trains in the region.
Braving heavy rain, farmers blocked the movement of trains on the Lucknow-Bijnor-Najibabad route at the Maujpur junction near Najibabad, Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) youth wing’s former state president Digamber Singh said.
“It affected the plying of the Chandigarh Express and other trains,” he said, adding that the six-hour blockade continued till 4pm.
Several groups of farmers have already begun blocking train tracks in parts of Punjab while in Uttar Pradesh, police have imposed restrictions under Section 144 in Lucknow. SKM, which is an umbrella body of the farmer unions that have continued their prolonged agitation against the Centre’s farm laws, said “protests will only be intensified until justice is secured” in the Lakhimpur Kheri case.
SKM claimed that more than 290 trains were reportedly affected and more than 40 trains cancelled. In Uttar Pradesh, there were many detentions of farmer leaders in numerous places by the UP Police. In Madhya Pradesh, the Police arrested protestors in several places like Guna, Gwalior, Rewa, Bamaniya (in Jhabua) and other places.
“Reports of successful Rail Roko have come in from numerous states like Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana etc,” SKM said.
Train services were on Monday affected in the East Coast Railway division of Odisha for around 30 minutes to one hour owing to the ‘rail roko’ agitation by farmers, demanding the dismissal and arrest of Union minister Ajay Misra for his alleged involvement in the Lakhimpur Kheri violence earlier this month.
In Odisha, however, the agitation continued for around 20 minutes at most stations, barring Gorakhnath, where demonstrators sat on the tracks for at least 50 minutes.
According to an ECoR official, as many as 12 trains came to a halt at the stations, causing problems for the daily commuters, even as the agitators refused to vacate the tracks.
The trains were allowed to move only after the protesters left the stations, he said.
