The Bharatiya Kisan Union (Tikait) has suggested that defence minister Rajnath Singh hold talks with the farmers to resolve the stalemate over the peasants’ protest, at a time their demand that Narendra Modi intervene has not been met and the Prime Minister has continued to hail the contentious farm laws.

Addressing a mahapanchayat in Munderwa of Basti district on Thursday, BKU president Naresh Tikait said: “The problem with the central government is that there is none with whom we can talk about the three controversial farm laws. We really don’t know with whom we should hold discussions.”

“Rajnath Singh is a farmer and he understands our problems,” Naresh told the well-attended rally.

Rajnath, a former agriculture minister, hails from Chandauli in east Uttar Pradesh and represents Lucknow in Parliament. There is a general feeling that he is readily available and flexible.

“He has served as BJP national president and chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. He is a farmer and a grassroots-level leader who is people-friendly on most issues,” said a senior BJP leader in Lucknow on the condition of anonymity.

Gradually spreading the farmers’ movement from west Uttar Pradesh to the eastern part of the sprawling state, the BKU, Rashtriya Lok Dal and the khaps together have been holding three rallies on an average every day. The attendance at the rallies has been encouraging.

Naresh, who heads the Balyan khap, said in Munderwa that the farmers’ protest at Delhi’s borders was a matter of life and death for them.

“We will make the Modi government bow before us and repeal the new farms laws. If it does not happen, we will throw them out in 2022 in Uttar Pradesh and in 2024 at the Centre,” Naresh said.

Earlier in the day, he had paid obeisance at the Ram Lalla and Hanumangarhi temples in Ayodhya, 60km from Basti.

“The farmers had made a mistake by supporting the BJP in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the 2017 Assembly polls. This government is trying to snatch our land with the help of the three dark farm laws. A true farmer treats his land as his mother but this government wants to take it from them. It will never be allowed,” he said, adding that the BKU wouldn’t support any political party in the future.

“But those who oppose the farm laws would obviously win the next elections,” Naresh said. “East Uttar Pradesh has always stood by the farmers of west Uttar Pradesh.”
Jayant Chaudhary, the vice-president of the RLD, addressed a huge rally at Sampurnnagar in Lakhimpur Kheri district and a smaller public meeting in Pilibhit.

On Wednesday, Naresh had organised a rally in Barabanki while his younger brother Rakesh Tikait had gone to Agra. Rakesh is the face of the farmers’ protest at the Ghazipur border.

Another rally was organised by khap leaders in Shamli, in west Uttar Pradesh, on Wednesday.

While the BKU, RLD and the khaps have their base in west Uttar Pradesh, they have gradually moved to the east to “make the farmers aware of the three farm laws and explain to them why they are draconian”.

“There is a massive government-sponsored campaign in Uttar Pradesh to tarnish the image of the innocent farmers and claim that the government is pro-peasant. This is why the BKU has planned to hold mahapanchayats in every district of the state and tell the farmers the truth that the Narendra Modi government is a supporter of the privatisation of everything, including our farmland,” Naresh told reporters in Basti.

“We are also holding rallies in other states to defeat the anti-farmer BJP in future elections,” the BKU chief added.

A khap leader who is in touch with the BKU as well as the RLD told The Telegraph that the three groups had held about 30 rallies in the past 10 days in 30 districts and planned to cover the remaining 45 districts of central and eastern Uttar Pradesh in the next 15 days.“Thereafter, we will focus for a few weeks on Delhi’s borders. Later, we will restart bigger mahapanchayats across Uttar Pradesh,” the khap leader said.

Dharmendra Malik, a BKU leader, resigned from the Krishi Samridhi Ayog, a panel of the Uttar Pradesh government, on Thursday. He alleged that the Ayog was not speaking for the farmers.

“The BKU is organising mahapanchayats on its own. The RLD and other groups are doing it independently. But the target is the same. We have a strong base in east Uttar Pradesh,” Malik said.