PoliticsProtests
Kisan Sabha to join 23 October nationwide protests against SIR, calls democracy the 'most urgent question'
Farmer, worker, student and women's groups plan district-level demonstrations demanding the end of the roll revision and the CEC's removal. AIKS will mark its 90th year in Nalgonda in November.
Key points
- The All India Kisan Sabha will join nationwide protests on 23 October against the SIR.
- The protesters want the SIR scrapped, CEC Gyanesh Kumar removed and a new way of picking election commissioners.
- AIKS holds its 36th conference in Nalgonda from 15 to 18 November.
The All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) will join nationwide protests on 23 October against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, its leaders said in New Delhi on Friday, bringing one of the country’s oldest farmers’ organisations into the campaign against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
The protests, called by the Samyukta Kisan Morcha and other groups, are to be held at district and local levels and will bring together farmers, trade unions, and student, youth and women’s organisations. Their demands are that the SIR be scrapped, Kumar removed and the method of selecting election commissioners changed.
“The most urgent question today is the question of defence of democracy, the Constitution,” AIKS president Ashok Dhawale told a press conference. He said the electoral process had been corrupted under the Modi government.
General secretary Vijoo Krishnan said the agrarian crisis had “deepened during the 12 years of the Modi government”. He warned that opening India’s market to farm imports under a trade deal with the United States, whose farmers receive heavy subsidies, would hurt growers, dairy farmers, horticulturists and fishers.
Ninety years on
The AIKS, founded in Lucknow on 11 April 1936 and claiming more than 1.58 crore members, will hold its 36th all-India conference in Nalgonda, Telangana, from 15 to 18 November. More than 800 delegates and observers are expected. It will open with a rally of one lakh farmers on 15 November, the birth anniversary of Birsa Munda, and the body has asked for its flag to be hoisted in villages across the country that day.
The venue marks the 80th anniversary of the Telangana armed peasants’ struggle. The AIKS accused the BJP and RSS of trying to give that movement a communal colour, saying it was a class struggle that united Hindu and Muslim peasants against the landlords and the Nizam.