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What are Farmers doing at the Gateway?

November 30, 2021 08:51 IST

A portion of the ashes of four farmers killed in the violence at Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh on October 3, 2021 was immersed in the Arabian Sea near the Gateway of India in Mumbai.

Hundreds of farmers and their leaders, including Rakesh Tikait of the Bharatiya Kisan Union, took out a procession of urns containing the ashes from Azad Maidan in south Mumbai to the Gateway of India, a distance of nearly 3 km.

The urns were garlanded at Azad Maidan before they were placed on a decorated vehicle. Police protection was provided to the yatra.

Farmers and leaders had gathered at Azad Maidan to attend a Kisan Mahapanchayat under the banner of the Samyukta Shetkari Kamgar Morcha.

After the procession reached the Gateway of India, select farmers boarded a boat with urns and immersed them in the middle of the sea amid chants of hymns.

The Shaheed Kalash Yatra of the farmer victims of Lakhimpur Kheri, which began in Pune on October 27 and traversed over 30 districts in Maharashtra, visited the statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the Chaitya Bhoomi of Babasaheb Ambedkar in Mumbai, the memorial to Shaheed Babu Genu and the statue of Mahatma Gandhi on November 27, the Samyukta Shetkari Kamgar Morcha said.

On Sunday, the yatra visited Hutatma Chowk, which commemorates 106 martyrs of the Samyukta Maharashtra Movement in the 1950s, in south Mumbai. The ashes were then immersed in the Arabian Sea, said Ashok Dhawale of the Samyukta Shetkari Kamgar Morcha.

Please click on the images for a better look.

 

IMAGE: Members of the Samyukta Shetkari Kamgar Morcha immerse the ashes of the farmers.
All Photographs: ANI Photo

 

IMAGE: Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Rakesh Tikait can be seen immersing the ashes.

 

 

 

 

 

Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff.com
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com

 
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