Farm laws: Farmers to celebrate ‘Vijay Diwas’ today before leaving protest sites

Protesting farmers are all set to formally mark their victory in the movement against the contentious farm laws at the borders of Delhi on Saturday after celebrating the day as “Vijay Diwas”.

The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), the umbrella body of farmers’ unions spearheading the protests so far, said farmers would take out victory marches on Saturday at all border points, toll plazas, and protest sites across the country, following which they will finally head home marking the conclusion of their year-long protests.

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The protesting farmers reportedly decided to celebrate the Diwas on December 10 but postponed it to a day later out of respect for India’s first Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat, who lost his life in an air accident this week and was cremated on Friday.

The Singhu and Ghazipur border points of the national capital—two of the sites where the farmers had been protesting for the past 14 months—have picked up activity, as farmers get busy completing their preparations to leave for their homes in trucks and tractor trolleys.

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According to farmers, the UP Gate protest site, on the other hand, will be completely cleared by December 15.

In a bid to avoid chaos, the protesting farmers have decided to not leave all at once on Saturday morning and some of them will stay back and wait for more vehicles to arrive.

“The larger tents will take a day or two to dismantle and we will need at least two trucks to take our belongings back,” a farmer from Punjab’s Amritsar told news reporters, adding that a few others from his village have already left for Delhi with tractors and trolleys.

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Thousands of farmers from Punjab, Haryana, and Western Uttar Pradesh, had staged protests at various Delhi borders from late November 2020, seeking repeal of the three farm laws.

On November 19, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that his government would repeal the contentious laws, and subsequently, Parliament passed a bill on November 29 to repeal them.