Opposing the Global Investors’ Meet (GIM) in Bengaluru and seeking the abolition of anti-farmer policies and protection of farmers right to food and employment, members of Karnataka Pranta Raitara Sangha (KPRS) staged a demonstration in Dharwad on Friday.
Led by district president of the KPRS B.S. Soppin, the farmers and office-bearers of various other organisations staged the demonstration outside the Deputy Commissioner’s Office in Dharwad and flayed indiscriminate land acquisition by the State government at the behest of capitalists. The protest was in response to the call for Statewide agitation given by the KPRS.
Addressing the protesters, Mr. Soppin said that following floods, droughts, COVID-19-induced lockdown, other natural calamities and anti-farmer policies in the last four years, the life of farmers had been adversely affected. The farmers who were hoping to recover this year, were hit by downpour again and their hopes had been washed away in the rainwater, he said.
He said that the current disposition led by the BJP was more interested in giving land and other benefits on a platter to capitalists and industrialists on the pretext of industrial development. However, the truth was that the companies were more interested in land grabbing than employment generation, he alleged.
CITU leaders Mahesh Pattar, B.I. Iliger, A.M. Khan, Gurusiddappa Ambiger and others took part in the protest and submitted a memorandum addressed to the Chief Minister to the officials of the district administration.
In the memorandum, the protesters have demanded, among others, withdrawal of the Electricity Amendment Bill, 2022 in Parliament; scientific compensation to farmers and farm labourers; waiver of all kinds of loans of rural people; issual of title deeds to ‘bagair hukum’ cultivators and those cultivating forest land; immediate stop to forceful land acquisition and effective implementation of employment gurantee scheme.
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