Farmers' protest
Protesting farmers picket Punjab hotel, BJP leaders slip out through backdoor
Phagwara/Punjab/IBNS: A group of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders in Punjab's Phagwara had to be taken out from the backdoor of a hotel by the police on Friday after protesting farmers picketed the building where they were holding an event.
Demonstrators from the Bharti Kisan Union (Doaba) protested outside the hotel where the BJP leaders were observing the birth anniversary of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
The farmers, protesting against the Centre's contentious laws, claimed that the hotel was owned by a BJP activist who also ran a company that supplied cattle and chicken feed.
The demonstrators said they will boycott the company's products.
Led by the union's vice president Kirpal Singh Mussapur, several demonstrators held a protest outside the hotel.
They also surrounded the BJP leaders and workers, who had managed to get inside before the farmers began their agitation.
The protesters also did not allow several BJP activists, including Bharati Sharma, district president of BJP's Mahila Wing, to enter the hotel, the police said.
Those who managed to get inside had to later slip out one by one from the hotel's backdoor under police protection to save themselves from the protesters.
They included BJP district and block presidents Rakesh Duggal and Paramjit Singh Pamma Chachoki and former mayor Arun Khosla, said reports.
Thousands of farmers are camped in Delhi-Haryana border since the end of November with the sole demand of the repeal of the laws enacted by the central government through an Ordinance amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
One of the Centre's new farm laws will now allow farmers to sell their produce to institutional buyers beyond the regulated wholesale market.
Though the middlemen in the wholesale markets are often accused of usurping the farmers in the earlier agricultural system, the protesters, backed by several opposition parties, fear they will have little bargaining power while selling their produce to institutional buyers, running the risk of getting exploited with the gradual destablising of the mundies.
The several rounds of talks between the union ministers and farmers' representatives went in vain as the peasants were stubborn in their demands while the government was in no mood to repeal the laws.
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