Siddaramaiah requests Madhya Pradesh CM to get detained Karnataka farmers released

PTI, Feb 15, 2024, 8:31 PM IST

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Thursday requested his Madhya Pradesh counterpart Mohan Yadav to get the farmers from the state, who were detained in Bhopal while travelling to the national capital to participate in a protest, released. A group of farmers from Karnataka travelling from Bengaluru to Delhi to participate in a protest against the “anti-farmer policies” of the Central government have been detained in Madhya Pradesh capital Bhopal without any reason, he said in a letter to Yadav.

It has been four days since the farmers have been detained and they have not been released yet, Siddaramaiah said. “It is now learnt that your police authorities are shifting them to Varanasi. Travelling to Delhi to participate in a peaceful protest is the Constitutional right of the people. It is highly unfortunate that farmers who are seeking better policies are being arrested and ill treated by police authorities in Madhya Pradesh,” the letter said.

Siddaramaiah requested Yadav to personally look into this and immediately get the farmers released without shifting them from place to place. The Samyukta Kisan Morcha (Non-Political) and the Kisan Mazdoor Morcha are spearheading the ‘Delhi Chalo’ agitation to exert pressure on the Centre over their demands including a law on Minimum Support Price (MSP) for crops and loan waivers.

Several farmer associations, mostly from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab, had called for a march on February 13 as part of their ‘Delhi Chalo’ mission to demand a law guaranteeing MSP for their produce, one of the conditions they had set when they agreed to withdraw their agitation in 2021. Besides a legal guarantee for MSP, they are demanding the implementation of the Swaminathan Commission’s recommendations, pensions for farmers and farm labourers, farm debt waiver, withdrawal of police cases and “justice” for victims of the Lakhimpur Kheri violence, reinstating of the Land Acquisition Act 2013, withdrawal from the World Trade Organisation, and compensation for families of farmers died during the previous agitation.