Mumbai: Sugarcane growers, demanding a higher price for their produce, intensified their agitation on Wednesday by setting on fire a police jeep and damaging several state transport buses in Western Maharashtra.
The escalation in the protests by the sugarcane growers owing allegiance to Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana, led by Raju Shetty, came on a day when two more outfits, headed by farmer leaders Sharad Joshi and Raghunathdada Patil, announced their plans to join the agitation.
The protests by the farmers - who have been demanding a price of Rs3,000 per tonne of sugarcane, as against Rs2,300 per tonne of the produce announced by the local co-operative sugar factories in western Maharashtra – have already claimed the lives of two farmers. While one farmer was fatally run over by a speeding truck on Monday, another was killed in the police shooting on the same afternoon.
Like on the previous days, the agitating farmers took to streets once again on Wednesday. The protesters targeted a huge posse of police personnel at Dindanerli near Kolhapur.
After hurling stones at a posse of law enforcers stationed to control the protesters, the agitated farmers set ablaze a police jeep and damaged scores of vehicles at Dindanerli.
The protesters also surrounded a police station at Ashta in the neighbouring Sangli district, demanding the released scores of farmers arrested in connection with the ongoing agitation. The police resorted to a mild cane charge to quell the protesters. The police also opened fire in the air, so as to drive away the protesters.
Meanwhile, Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana leader Sadabhau Khot was released from Pune’s Yerwada jail on Wednesday. Khot had been detained by the police on Monday as a precautionary measure.
In a related development, the state-run Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) – which had suspended all its bus services in western Maharashtra on Monday following violence at several places – resumed partially its bus operations in the region.
“This being a festival season, we do not want to inconvenience the passengers stranded at various bus stations across western Maharashtra. That’s why we have decided to operate the state transport services partially. We are doing so with police protection,” a senior MSRTC official said.
On Monday, the protesters had burnt down seven MSRTC buses and damaged 20-odd state-run buses in western Maharashtra.
In his effort to derive political mileage out of the farmers’ agitation, social activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal thrown his weight behind the sugarcane growers.
Through tweets he has been putting since Tuesday, Kejriwal condemned Monday’s shooting by the police on farmers, demanded the release of arrested farmers’ leader Raju Shetty and compensation to the families of those killed in the firing.
“When farmers demand price hike, police shoot at them. When Reliance demands price hike, government even sacks its minister to please Reliance,” Kejriwal tweeted as he demanded a higher price for sugarcane in western Maharashtra.
Later this week, Kejriwal is expected in the agitation-hit areas of western Maharashtra where he plans to meet the farmers’ leaders to express his solidarity with them.
