Police Disrupt Rakesh Tikait Meeting with Students Union

Students wanted to meet Farmers movement as gesture of solidarity with the farmers' movement.

students
Image: AISA

Adding to the series of Yogi regime’s efforts to stifle opposition against the government in Uttar Pradesh, the police forces in the capital city of Lucknow heckled students representing several student organisations prior to their scheduled meeting with Bhartiya Kisan Union leader Rakesh Tikait on Friday.

Mr. Tikait was visiting Lucknow strategically before the commencement of ‘Mission Uttar Pradesh’ in the first week of September during which farmers will intensify their demands for the revocation of the farm laws by campaigning against the Yogi led BJP government all across the election-bound North Indian state.

students

As a gesture of solidarity with the farmers’ movement, Lucknow University’s United Students’ Front including members of All India Students’ Association (AISA), National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), Samajwadi Chhatra Sabha (SCS), and Students’ Federation of India (SFI) had planned to meet the farmers’ leader during his visit.

As part of the meeting, students had gathered at SheRoes hangout, a space open to the general public in the city only to be told to disperse by the Lucknow police on the account of the imposition of section 144 of CrPC.

Section 144 of CrPC prohibits any assembly of four or more four people in an area.

The city administration threatened the SheRoes of legal action against following which the students collectively decided to move out and carry out programme on the main road in front of Ambedkar park.

Image: AISA

Addressing the student activists gathered for the meeting, Mr. Tikait said that the massive support that the students have offered to the farmers’ cause will significantly intensify the reach of the farmers’ movement. Furthermore, he announced that he will be making frequent visits to the capital city to forge deeper solidarities with other groups to challenge the BJP regime.

The students’ front handed over a letter of solidarity to the farmers’ leader.

“Farmers form the most important foundational pillar of the Indian economy but under the current regime they have been subjected to the worst attack of all,” the letter read.

Students through their solidarity letter also urged the opposition political parties to extend their sincerest solidarity to the movement of farmers and agricultural labourers so as to keep the faith of masses intact in the institution of democracy.

Under Mission UP, farmers will be organising big rallies and a Mahapanchayat to build up an extensive movement at all levels in the state against the policies of the far-right BJP government. The state will go to poll in February-March 2022.

“Lucknow will become Delhi,” Mr. Tikait had announced at a press conference earlier.

Indian farmers and agricultural labourers have been protesting at various border points of the national capital Delhi for over eight months, against the three neo-liberal farm laws passed by the Modi-led Union government. Till now, the movement has been able to garner widespread support from the masses all across the nation.

Refuting the claims of the Modi government, farmers have consistently explained that the new laws center on the profit accumulation motive of large corporates by freeing them to procure farm goods outside government-regulated wholesale grain markets which will weaken the bargaining power of the farmers and exploit them.

Read More: Three Farm Laws to Nurture Large Corporates and Not Farmers or Consumers

 

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