Despite ban, 10,000 in Uttar Pradesh attend mahapanchayat

MEERUT: Two days after the administration in UP’s

Shamli

district invoked prohibitory orders and refused permission for a ‘

mahapanchayat

’, over 10,000 people came together on Friday afternoon against the three

agriculture laws

brought by the government.

An endless stream of tractors, passenger jeeps, motorcycles and bicycles brought thousands to Bhainswal village, where hundreds of policemen and senior officials were already camping even as the administration appeared to be on the back foot, having diluted its earlier stand of not allowing the gathering. “We had stopped a political party from holding a public gathering. But farmers can air their opinion,” district magistrate of Shamli, Jasjeet Kaur, told TOI.

Addressing the farmers, vice president of Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), Jayant Chaudhary, assailed the Uttar Pradesh government for invoking prohibitory orders. “Section 144 of CrPC had been slapped in Shamli to prevent this mahapanchayat. We did not stop and we will not stop. Farmers cannot be stopped, they build the nation and feed us,” Chaudhary said.

The RLD leader also slammed the FIR registered against the family of a Sikh farmer who died in Delhi during the recent protests. A case was filed against the wife and the brother of the Pilibhit man after his body was wrapped in the national flag before cremation. “We respect the tricolor so much that when our brothers come wrapped in it from the borders, we don’t even shed a tear. Now they say we insult our tiranga?” Chaudhary said. He also took a potshot at the government for filing a case against climate activist Greta Thunberg. “She is just a young activist. Will they go to Sweden to arrest her?"