Did Kejriwal End The Year-Long Farm Stir To Enter Rajya Sabha?

In an amazing twist, the Punjab farm agitation, going on for 400 days at Shambhu border, abruptly came to an end on March 19.  Police cleared the protesters, less than an hour after farm union leaders –representing 28 farmer unions — returned from Chandigarh to protest sites after a four-hour meeting with three Union ministers — Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Piyush Goyal and Pralhad Joshi. With protestors cleared out of iconic Shambhu, it means AAP has decided it will no longer patronise farm protests and has begun to focus on winning Ludhiana (West) assembly by-election. Why is clearing Shambhu border linked to winning an urban seat like Ludhiana? Sources say police action on farmers came after Ludhiana traders told AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal in a March 17 meeting that it would be difficult to back the AAP if the farmers’ protest continued. Industrialists also wanted the road opened as it was putting a strain on their business. After losing the popular vote in Delhi, Kejriwal didn’t want to risk it in Punjab. He is keen to enter the Rajya Sabha. To ensure this he has nominated Sanjeev Arora, a Rajya Sabha MP from Punjab, as the AAP candidate for the Ludhiana West bypoll. Arora, who will not vacate his RS seat till he wins, has been promised a ministerial berth in the Punjab government, if he wins. Punjab BJP chief Sunil Jakhar slammed the AAP for using farmers for their personal and political interests. “It is the AAP that instigated the farm protests.” He recalled how Punjab had previously informed the Supreme Court that it could not remove farm leader Jagjit Dallewal from the site fearing the situation would become “uncontrollable”. The same government was able to clear the protest site in just 20 minutes, he wondered.