The Supreme Court on Monday heard a petition filed by farmers on the closed road on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border in a nine-month-long farmers’ agitation against agricultural laws.
The Supreme Court again questioned the Central and state governments saying that traffic on the road cannot be stopped in this way. In such a situation, the Central Government will have to find a solution in two weeks.
Why are farmers demonstrating?
The Modi government had brought three laws in September last year to improve the agriculture sector. These include creating commercial areas for procurement outside government mandis, sanctioning contract farming, and abolishing storage limits of several kinds of cereal and pulses.
Farmers in several states including Punjab and Haryana are opposing these laws. He says the government wants to get rid of mandis and MSP through them.
Farmers camping on highways for the past nine months
Farmers have been staging dharna on the borders of Delhi since 25th November 2020. This has led to the closure of vehicular movement on several other routes including Ghazipur border, Tikri border, Shahjahanpur border, Delhi-Noida route.
The closure of the Noida route is taking two hours for people to travel for 20 minutes.
Similarly, the closure of one-way roads along the Shahjahanpur border has made the journey long for people going to Delhi.
The Uttar Pradesh government had filed an affidavit on Saturday
The Uttar Pradesh government had filed an affidavit on Saturday saying that the government is trying to convince farmers in the road jam case. Most of the protesters are older and older farmers.
The government has said that diversion has been created for smooth traffic through Maharajpur and Hindon roads.
Similarly, the Central Government said that efforts are on to resolve the issue and two weeks time is required.
Farmers have right to demonstrate, but can’t stop roads – SC
A bench of Justices SK Kaul and Hemant Gupta asked the Central and state governments why roads are closed so far. Traffic on the road cannot be stopped like this. The Government has to find a solution.
The bench said the Supreme Court has several judgments in this regard that the road cannot be closed in this manner. Farmers have the right to demonstrate, but movement on roads cannot be stopped.
Supreme Court gives two weeks time to resolve case
The Supreme Court said others should not be harmed if protesters do not accept the policy. He can build his own protest site in a village, but cannot disrupt the lives of others.
The court has given two weeks’ time to the Centre and the Uttar Pradesh government to resolve the matter.
The government will now have to take steps to resolve the matter by the time the next hearing in the case is held on September 20.
All 11 talks of farmers’ organizations failed with government
There have also been 11 rounds of talks between the Government and the farmers in the matter, but there was no solution as the farmers stuck to their demand for withdrawal of laws.
More importantly, the government had also proposed to farmers not to implement the laws for 18 months, but the farmers rejected it in the last talks on January 22 demanding complete repeal of the laws.