Fri. Mar 29th, 2024
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Nashik: Amidst the ongoing farmer protests, approximately 5,000 farmers from Maharashtra are going to start a vehicle march from Nashik to Delhi from 3.00 pm today. 

The people participating in the march are going to join the farmers protesting against the farm agri-marketing laws at the Delhi borders. The All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) is going to flag off the March with a public meeting in Nashik at 1.30 pm. As per the reports, farmers from 20 districts will travel from Nashik to Delhi (1,266 km) and they will join the protesting farmers at the Rajasthan-Haryana border on December 24.

Ashok Dhawale, president, AIKS, said, “The vehicle jatha will begin with a massive public meeting at Nashik at 1.30 pm. About 5,000 farmers will join this meeting and participate in the vehicle march. Most of them will accompany us to the Maharashtra border. Thereafter, 2,000 or so farmers will continue to travel to Delhi,” quoted Hindustan Times as saying. 

Before entering Madhya Pradesh, the march will be met by farmers at Ozar, Pimpalgaon Balwant, Chandwad, Umrane, Malegaon, and Shirpur and Dhule districts of Maharashtra.

The main motive of this vehicle march is to show solidarity with the farmers and to counter the union government’s argument that only farmers from Punjab and Haryana are affected by the three laws. Ashok Dhawale further said, “The government is running propaganda that whatever is happening in Delhi is only because of farmers from Punjab and Haryana. When thousands of farmers from Maharashtra will travel around 1,300 kilometers to participate in the protest, it will effectively counter the government’s argument.”

The huge farmer protest or dissent was set off by the three farm laws pushed through Parliament by the central government in September. These permit agribusinesses to trade with negligible guidelines, grant brokers to reserve huge amounts of food wares for economies of scale, and set down new agreement or contract base farming rules. As per the farmers, the new guidelines favor big corporations to whom they will lose business, gut the mandi system, and step by step end the system of minimum support prices (MSP) that goes about as a defensive net for cultivators.