Farmers protest ban on old tractors across western UP

GHAZIABAD/MEERUT: Thousands of tractor-driving

farmers

blocked roads and laid siege of the offices of district magistrates in various districts of western Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday in protest against the ban on diesel vehicles that are more than a decade old. “We can’t buy a new tractor every 10 years,” a protesting farmer said.

The farmers were also vocal against what they called the Centre’s “anti-farmer policies” that were “pushing farmers to the brink of suicide”. In Ghaziabad, farmer’ representatives from 192 villages met district magistrate Ritu Maheshwari, who assured them their demands would be placed before the government.

Farmers in Ghaziabad are among the worst affected as, according to the regional transport office (RTO), 70% of the nearly 13,000 tractors registered under the agriculture category are over 10 years old. Rakesh Tikait, national spokesperson for Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), under whose aegis the protest was held, said, “It is important to note that we are not against the National Green Tribunal (which imposed the ban) and we honour the court’s verdict. Our protest is against the government that should have created a fund, like their flagship Swachhta Abhiyan, to provide new tractors to farmers whose old ones were more than a decade old. While farmers’ welfare is at the core of every political party’s poll agenda, at the ground level, the government’s policies are smothering them.”

The protests saw massive police deployment across west UP districts and caused massive jams in

Meerut

, Bijnor, Shamli, Muzaffarnagar and Baghpat, among others.

Praveen Singh, a farmer in Bijnor who sat on his tractor parked in the

DM

’s office, told TOI, “How can this government become so heartless? We are farmers who feed 125 crore Indians. Instead of bettering our lives and agricultural methods, this government is pushing us back into primitive era when oxen were used to plough fields.”

“Do they even know what a tractor means to a farmer?” asked Sarvesh Gujjar, a farmer in Shamli. “We use this piece of machinery for more than 25 years and here they want to snatch it away in 10 years. In a decade, a farmer is able to finish off the loan he takes for buying the vehicle and when time comes for him to earn something, it is gone.”

Dharmender Malik, BKU’s media coordinator for west UP, said, “It is not a joke to replace tractor every 10 years. If the government is so concerned about pollution, it must provide farmers with new tractors. Be it pending sugarcane dues or an increase in power tariff, there is little succour for farmer under BJP rule.”