Angry farmers call panchayat meeting after police register FIR over Sunday’s clash

Tribune News Service
Hisar, May 18

Farmers called a panchayat meeting in Hisar on Wednesday after reports said police registered a First Information Report in connection with Sunday’s clash with police.

A clash broke out on Sunday evening over a visit of Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Farmers have been protesting three controversial agriculture laws that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government passed against all opposition in September year and that has since been the source of a bitter and a thus-far unrelenting impasse between farmers and the Centre.

Khattar was visiting Hisar to inaugurate a Covid care centre. Sunday's standoff lasted two hours until a meeting between farmers and the police administration helped calm the situation.

Farmers said they would hold their panchayat meeting at Ramayan toll plaza.

A district police spokesperson denied the FIR first, but it was later confirmed by Inspector General of Police, Hisar, Rakesh Kumar Arya.

Arya said that FIR had already been registered when the farmers came to him on Sunday evening, and that he’d made “no commitment” to them that there would not be one over Sunday’s violence.

Farmers mainly from Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh have been protesting on the outskirts of Delhi since November---a matter that has become particularly concerning for a nation that is still in the throes of the devastating second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Opposition parties in India recently wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to repeal the controversial agriculture laws---the key demand of the protesting farmers---to prevent the pandemic from spreading among the protesters.

Farmers fear that the laws, which weaken the existing mandi system, leave them powerless against private players and powerful corporate.  

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