76-year-old farmer files nomination as Independent

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, April 28

A 76-year-old farmer from Chak Des Raj village, who has been into organic farming since 1998, has filed his nomination papers for the upcoming Lok Sabha poll. He is an Independent candidate, who will fight the elections on environmental issues which probably no one else has taken into consideration yet.

He is among those handful of people who had adopted organic farming in late 1990s in the true sense.

Upkar Singh, the farmer, has shown guts as an Independent to contest against Congress candidate Santokh Singh Chaudhary, SAD candidate Charanjit Singh Atwal and AAP candidate Justice Jora Singh in Jalandhar.

He certainly has the most important issue — i.e. environment, which he would be discussing while seeking votes.

Upkar said it was sad that the most important matter which directly concerns our lives had taken a backseat nowadays.

“Everything we consume is impure, be it water or air we inhale or food we eat. It would affect us only, if we would not take care of the problem,” he said.

Upkar said he would also be releasing his manifesto which would have issues that were needed to be solved on a priority basis and the main issue was the environmental issue.

He said he had been doing organic farming (without using chemicals and pesticides) for long and he had found in these years that this was the only way one could protect the soil, food, water and air.

Retired as chief goods supervisor from the Railways Department, Upkar said he was a pensioner and he understands issues of all pensioners.

“I would be meeting various Central pensioner associations and would tell them that if I come to power, I would raise this issue properly,” he said.

He added that his fight to save environment has started and he would not stop.arlier I was doing it by growing natural crops. Now, I want to spread this cause,” he said.