The Samyukt Kisan Morcha, which spearheaded the yearlong farmer agitation against three now-revoked farm laws, on Sunday warned of protests at government offices unless the “scurrilous” allegations made against the movement in the NewsClick FIR are withdrawn.
In a statement, the SKM said it was the government that was guilty of everything the farmers were being accused of.
The FIR that forms the basis of the charges against NewsClick editor-in-chief Prabir Purkayastha and two others states: “The accused persons have also conspired to disrupt supplies and services essential to the life of community in India and abet damage and destruction of property by protraction of farmers’ protest through such illegal foreign funding….
“The objective of above nexus was to promote… funding farmers’ agitation with the objective of causing huge loss of several hundred crores to Indian economy and create internal law and order problems in India.”
The farmer protest remains one of the most embarrassing instances for the Modi government — which prides itself on being decisive — where it conceded ground though it’s not the only time the current dispensation has rolled back a decision in its nine years in power.
Rejecting each of the charges levelled against it, the SKM said: “No supply was disrupted by the farmers. No property was damaged by the farmers. No loss to the economy was caused by farmers. No law and order problem was created by the farmers.”
Instead, according to the SKM, “by violently stopping the farmers from exercising their democratic right of reaching the nation’s capital, through barbed wire fencing, water cannons, lathi charge and digging up roads, it is the Union government that caused great inconvenience to the people of the nation and the farmers.
“Farmers had to sit in protest for 13 long months, under the blazing summer sun, torrential rains and freezing winter cold. It is the Union government and BJP-RSS combine that created law and order problems by mowing down farmers at Lakhimpur Kheri under running vehicles, killing four farmers and one journalist. The Union minister of state for home affairs and his son were behind this attack.”
The SKM — which has split since the marathon protest — underlined that the Prime Minister had not “removed the delinquent minister (or) ensured legal action against the culprits”.
Together with those killed at Lakhimpur Kheri, the SKM’s count of farmer deaths during the protest stands at 735.
“It is the government that destroyed public property. It is the government that conspired with crony capitalists to grab and capture food production and supply chains, destroying food security of the people and economy of the nation,” the SKM said, further underscoring that Chinese companies had contributed to the PM Cares Fund created for battling Covid.
The SKM asserted that the farmers’ movement was a “spontaneous expression of high degree of nationalism”.
It emphasised that “Indian farming not only provides for food security to 142 crore people, it provides subsistence to 90 crore rural folk, the importance of which was seen by all during the corona pandemic” when the agriculture sector was the only one to grow in the first quarter of 2020 during the nationwide lockdown.