Speak up for Gujarati farmers, Bhagwant tells Punjabi writers

Sarbjit Dhaliwal

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Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 2

AAP MP Bhagwant Mann, who was rounded up in Gujarat where he had gone to address a rally on October 31, returned to Punjab this morning.

He said that Punjabi writers and intellectuals should raise their voice in support of Gujarati people, especially farmers who were not being allowed to even hold rallies for their demands.

He said that apart from addressing the rally, he was keen to closely watch the Gujarat model of development propagated all over the country with much fanfare.

“However, what I saw there was more akin to Hitler’s model of governance,” said Bhagwant Mann. He said that the same model was now being implemented at the national level by the Modi-led government in the Centre.

Mann, who was invited by Kannubhai, a Gujarati political leader, to address a farmers’ rally, said that Punjabi writers and intellectuals should go there to see how the Gujarat Government had crushed civil liberties and peoples’ right to protest by using state power recklessly.

“It is time to stand by the people of Gujarat, especially the farming community which was not being allowed to speak its mind and to protest,” said Mann.

He said the application to seek permission to hold the rally at Bhavnagar in Gujarat was submitted to the authorities concerned a week in advance but it was denied at the last minute on the plea that enough police force was not available for the rally.

However, hundreds of policemen were deployed to prevent the rally, he said.

He said that when he and other leaders insisted on visiting the rally site, the police detained him and others and took them to a police station far away from the rally venue.

He said that by putting in a lot of hard work, farmers had made land cultivable at Mahuva near Bhavnagar. Now, that land had been offered to a private company. Farmers, who were protesting against the allotment of the land to the company, had invited Mann to address a rally in their support.

Mann’s effigy burnt 

Activists of the Student’s Organisation of India (SOI) on Monday burnt the effigy of Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann outside the district administrative complex in Muktsar. They alleged Mann had attended a religious function under the influence of liquor