Muzaffarnagar, Feb 01: Violating prohibitory orders, a large number of farmers today held a rally here demanding higher support price for sugarcane and release of all peasants detained during recent agitations by February 7 failing which they warned of an stir throughout Uttar Pradesh. As hundreds of police and state paramilitary force personnel kept a strict vigil, truckloads of farmers reached the venue of the 'kisan mahapanchayat' organised by Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU). Addressing the rally, BKU Chief Mahinder Singh Tikait demanded that the state government fix sugarcane support price at Rs 110 and demanded the release of all farmers detained in the course of agitation by sugarcane growers and cases against them withdrawn by February 7.

He warned if this was not done then demonstrations and sit-ins would be staged throughout the state. Tikait also demanded a new agriculture policy in which support price of the crop was fixed prior to the harvest season and the subsidies provided directly to the farmers.

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The BKU leader accused the Mayawati Government of doing nothing for the sugarcane farmers whose crops had been badly hit in the drought and whose crores of rupees as arrears had not been paid by the sugar mill owners. He said there was no option but to take recourse of agitation since atrocities on farmers continued unabated.

Lok Dal (Ajit Singh faction) Mla Rajpal Baliyan, announced at the rally he was quitting the assembly to protest atrocities on sugarcane farmers and police lathicharge on BKU activists on January 24.
Bureau Report