After year-long protest, farmers begin journey back home

NEW DELHI: The protesting farmers are set to go back home in a victory march on Saturday. The protestors are taking down their tents at the Delhi borders as they prepare to return to their homes following the announcement of the suspension of their year-long protest.

Farmers’ unions have also decided to honour locals who helped the farmers at Delhi’s Singhu, Tikri, and Ghazipur borders while they braved extreme weather and COVID-19 pandemic living in tents on highways during the year-long protest.

Farmers’ leaders said that locals offered “immense help” to the protesters in different ways such as providing electricity and water connections from their homes.

Now it is time for them to show their gratitude towards such people and honour them, they said.

The SKM, which spearheaded the farmers’ protest, had on Thursday decided to suspend the long-drawn agitation after the Union government agreed to consider all its other demands, days after the repeal of the three contentious agrarian laws.

Thousands of farmers from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh were protesting at the borders of the national capital since November 26 last year to demand the repeal of the three contentious agrarian laws.

On November 29, a bill was passed in Parliament to repeal the laws, one of the main demands of the farmers.

However, the farmers refused to end their protest, demanding that the Centre fulfill their other demands that included a legal guarantee for minimum support price (MSP) and the withdrawal of cases against farmers.