As the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday organised a farmers’ rally in Nandigam in West Bengal the agitating farmers near Delhi have decided to extend their agitation to different parts of the country.
According to the leader of Bharatiya Kisan Union (Doaba region) Manjit Singh Rai they would work to politically defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party across India. They would definitely campaign against the BJP in the coming Assembly election, especially in West Bengal.
Rai said that he could not take part in the meeting on Friday with the ministers as farmers from Odisha, Bihar and West Bengal had come to meet them.
He said that a plan has been worked out, according to which some leaders of the farmers’ unions would first travel to Odisha on Jan 15 and then to two other states.
Rai said that the farmers would snatch the political ground of the BJP because the latter was trying to dispossess them of their land.
The farmers’ decision to enter Bengal incidentally came on the day when the BJP launched a campaign to woo their counterparts in Bengal. BJP leader Kailash Vijayvargiya, Dilip Ghosh, Mukul Roy and local Nandigram former MLA Suvendu Adhikari addressed a public meeting of farmers in the place where 14 people were killed in police firing on March 14, 2007 when the villagers were protesting against the acquisition of land for Special Economic Zone. The Left Front was in power then. However, Friday’s Nandigram meeting was marred by protest, stone-pelting and clashes.
