BATHINDA, Punjab—Youth Congress president and Giddarbaha MLA Amrinder Singh Raja Warring will visit Gujarat’s Kutch region after the Delhi assembly elections to take up the issue of Sikh farmers facing threats from the local villagers.
Raja Warring on Monday said he would meet the farmers and raise the issue before the National Commission for Minorities and the National Human Rights Commission. Scores of Punjabi farmers settled in Gujarat for decades are facing threats from local villagers. Last week, some farmers were allegedly beaten up, leaving one seriously injured. Sikh farmers settled there alleged that they had been targeted by the land mafia, attacked by goons and booked by cops.
Warring accused Punjab chief minister Parkash Badal and Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Badal of befooling people by shedding crocodile tears for the welfare of Punjabis and doing nothing in reality. He said Punjabis are suffering in Gujarat even though the state is ruled by Akali Dal’s alliance partner BJP. However, SAD bosses have never raised the issue with the BJP, he alleged.
The Sikh farmers had made the inhospitable terrain in Bhuj area of Gujarat cultivable after they settled there in 1965 at the exhortation of then prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.
On Sunday evening, a posse of 20 cops was deployed in Gujarat’s Loria village, where one villager was seriously injured in an attack last week, to provide security to Sikh farmers, their fields and families. Also, a new police station in-charge has been appointed in the area. “K G Desai is the new Bhuj division B police station in-charge and he visited us along with tehsildar K P Shah on Sunday and assured complete security,” said farmers Harwinder Singh and Amandeep Singh from the village.
