Police in the northern state of Punjab of India arrested hundreds of farmers and used excavators to tear down their temporary camps in a border area where they had protested for more than a year to demand better crop prices.
The farmers had camped on the border with a adjoining Haryana since last February, when the security forces arrested their march towards the capital, New Delhi, to press by legally backed by more state support for more state support for crops.
“We didn’t need to use any force because there was no resistance,” said Nanak Singh, a senior police officer, alto ANI News Agency on Authorization Action Wednesday night. “The farmers cooperated well and sat on buses themselves.”
The farmers had received prior notice, he added.
The television images showed the police using excavators to demolish stores and stages, while accompanying farmers who took personal items to vehicles.
The media said that among the hundreds detained were the leaders of the farmers Sarwan Singh Pandher and Jagjit Singh Dallewal, the latter took in an ambulance as he had been in an indefinite protest for months.
“On the one hand, the government is negotiating with farmers’ organizations and, on the other hand, it is stopping them,” said Rakesh Tikait, spokesman for the Bhartiya Kisan Union group in X.
The ruler AAM AADMI (AAP) of Punjab, who authorized the eviction, said the farmers contained their demands, but asked them to assume their complaints with the federal government.
“Let’s work together to safeguard the interests of Punjab,” said the vice president of the state in the state, Tarunpreet Singh Sond, and added that the blockade of the key roads had harmed the economy of the state. “Closing roads is not the solution.”
The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was forced to repeal some agricultural laws in 2021 after a one -year protest by farmers when they camped outside Delhi for months.
Federal Government officials met on Wednesday with farmers’ leaders, said Fatehjung Singh Bajwa, vice president of the Bharatiya Janata (BJP) party of Modi in Punjab.
“It is clear that this arrest is a deliberate attempt to interrupt continuous dialogue between farmers and BJP leadership,” he added in an X publication.
