GURUGRAM: Marking the completion of seven months of protests against the three contentious agricultural laws, hundreds of farmers, students and activists from Gurugram set out for Panchkula on Saturday morning to lend support to the Samyukta Kisan Morcha’s (SKM) call for a nationwide agitation.
The heavy barricading by police on the Delhi and Gurugram sides for security purposes though led to hours-long jams in the city.
While a section of protesters left for Panchkula in the morning amidst heavy barricading and checking on the Delhi-Gurugram border, others left later in the day.
Those from Gurugram joined other protesters outside Nada Sahib Gurudwara in Panchkula to take out a march till Raj Bhawan in Chandigarh, raising anti-government and pro-democracy slogans.
“It was a massive gathering that infused a fresh wave of energy into the farmers’ movement.
The march was enough to suggest that the government cannot break this movement and we will force them to accept our demands,” said Santokh Singh, member of SKM’s district unit that organised the ‘kheti bachao, loktantra bachao’ protest.
Farmers handed over a memorandum to the governor, highlighting the high-handed approach adopted by the government so far, and demanded that the farmers’ movement be dealt with democratically and the scrapping of the three laws.
It states that the historical farmers’ movement being led by SKM is aimed at not only saving farming and the farmers but also the democracy of our country.
The call for protest and the possibilities of farmers entering the national capital led to heavy deployment of cops at Sirhaul border on the Delhi-Gurugram expressway.
The traffic jam was cleared late in the afternoon.
While the cops claimed that the traffic jam was cleared late in the afternoon, commuters complained of being stuck in long tailbacks due to slow checking.
“It was unusually chaotic at the Sirhaul border.
Cops were checking each and every vehicle and clearing one vehicle at a time,” said Vijay Dewan, a daily commuter.