‘Rail roko’ protest: Trains stopped at many places across country by farmers demanding repeal of farm laws

In an attempt to pressurise the Modi government to repeal the contentious farm laws, lakhs of farmers gathered at railway tracks across the country on Thursday and blocked the movement of goods as well as passenger trains as part of their ‘rail roko’ protests.

Several long-distance trains and mid-distance trains were stopped by the protesting farmers. Visuals released by the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), an umbrella body of farmers’ unions, show farmers squatting on railway tracks and shouting slogans against the Modi government.

Holding posters and banners, protesters sat on the tracks at many places on the Delhi-Ludhiana-Amritsar railway route in Punjab. The SKM said that farmers blocked the Jalandhar Cantt-Jammu railway track in Jalandhar and in Mohali district.

In Haryana, as per the SKM, seven train stations were blocked in Panipat alone. Besides, many stations at Sonipat, Ambala and Jind were completely blocked. Protesters, many of them women, squatted on the railway tracks at Ambala, Kurukshetra, Panipat, Panchkula and Fatehabad (Bhattu Kalan) districts too, said SKM.

In western Uttar Pradesh, BKU activists sat on railway tracks at many places and blocked the movement of trains. In Muradnagar, BKU activists distributed sweets and showered rose petals on policemen.

Similarly, in Modinagar and Ghaziabad stations, BKU activists sat on the railway tracks, shouting slogans against the Modi government. Utkal Express was stopped by the protesting farmers at Ghaziabad station.

Protesting farmers stopped trains at various places in Rajasthan also. In Jaipur, thousands of activists from AIKS gathered at the railway station and sat on the tracks. In Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, several AIKS activists were arrested by the police.

While north India saw a complete shutdown between 12-4 pm along railway tracks, protests were reported from several parts of Maharashtra, Odisha, West Bengal, Karnataka and Bihar too. The SKM also shared a video of AIKS and Left activists shouting slogans while sitting on tracks against the Central government in West Bengal.

The ‘rail roko’ protest was announced by the SKM last week. Notably, over the last few weeks, the farmers protesting at Delhi’s borders have been heading out to other states to take the protests across the country.

The farmers refused to accept the government’s offer of an 18-month freeze on the three laws in the last round of talks.

While the farmers contend that the farm laws will shrink their income by doing away with the MSP and APMC Act, the government claims that the laws are major ‘reforms’ in the farm sector that will help farmers dispense with middlemen and allow them to sell their produce anywhere in the country.