Even as additional district and sessions judge Vivek Puri held a special Lok Adalat to resolve the issue of enhanced compensation to farmers, the BKU (Ekta) Ugrahan group continued with its dharna at the grain market here today.
The Lok Adalat, which heard the affected farmers at length yesterday and today, could not arrive at a sum acceptable to them.
It was finally adjourned at 7:30 p.m. today and would again be convened tomorrow at noon to hear the cases of the remaining farmers, it is learnt.
The BKU leadership, which had earlier postponed its rail roko agitation proposed on March 25, however, claimed that they would continue with their dharna and agitation till enhanced compensation was paid to each and every farmer whose land was acquired by the Trident group in villages of Fatehgarh Channa, Dhaula and Sanghera in Barnala district. It is learnt that 90 pc of the cases of enhanced compensation have been resolved, and only 10 pc remain. Incidentally, these include the cases of farmers such as Roop Singh Channa, Baljinder Singh, Bhagat Singh and Bhola Singh, who were at the forefront of the agitation in the past.
BKU president Joginder Singh Ugrahan and general secretary Sukhdev Singh Kokri told The Indian Express that the denial of enhanced compensation to such farmers who were part of the agitation against the Trident land acquisition was a “conspiracy” by the management to “teach farmers a lesson for being part of the struggle”.
District authorities, however, attributed the delay in settlement of some cases to “technical reasons”. The agitation over payment of enhanced compensation by farmers of the area had taken a bloody turn during the previous Congress regime, when the then government tried to suppress the agitation by using force. As many as three farmers had lost their lives in their struggle against the land acquisition, while many farmers had also sustained injuries.