AAP gives respect, not ranks

A section of the crowd at Jantar Mantar on Monday, the first day of Anna Hazare’s agitation against the land ordinance. Picture by Yasir Iqbal

New Delhi, Feb. 23: Anna Hazare today returned to Jantar Mantar to launch his agitation against the Narendra Modi government’s land ordinance, calling it “anti-farmer” and designed to “grab land in the way” the British used to do.

But the crowds were thinner this time on the capital’s protest street than 2011, when the septuagenarian activist had started his anti-corruption protest against the then ruling UPA, protégé Arvind Kejriwal and many of today’s Aam Aadmi Party leaders by his side.

None of them could be spotted at the site this time.

Hazare, who sat alone on a stage, termed the ordinance a move by the government to “grab land” and asked whether the promise of “good days” – an allusion to the BJP’s ” achchhe din” slogan – was only for industrialists.

“This ordinance is anti-farmer. It is designed to grab land in the same way as the Britishers used to do,” Anna said, threatening to launch a bigger agitation if the government didn’t scrap the ordinance the Union cabinet had cleared on December 29.

Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia seek Hazare’s blessings at a meeting in New Delhi on Monday. (PTI)

Today was the first day of the two-day protest against the ordinance, which tries to ease land acquisition for defence projects, rural housing and electrification, industrial corridors and public-private-partnership infrastructure projects by waiving the need for landowners’ consent and a social impact study.

Delhi chief minister Kejriwal and other AAP leaders – many of them former activists who are now ministers in the Delhi government – kept away as Hazare has sought to keep the protest apolitical. The activist had said politicians could join the protest but wouldn’t be allowed on the stage.

“If politicians come on the stage, my agitation would be termed politically motivated. I don’t want that to happen,” he said.

Kejriwal and Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia met Hazare today. Sisodia later announced that Kejriwal would join the protest tomorrow.

“There was no justification to change the 2013 land acquisition law through an ordinance. AAP views it as anti-farmer,” the party said in a tweet.

Although the AAP supported Hazare’s cause, party volunteers didn’t join the protest. The impact was visible as the crowd numbered barely a thousand, far fewer than the 5,000 to 6,000 who had packed into the street in 2011, when media coverage also ensured that the count never ebbed.

The crowd also didn’t reflect the presence of some 5,000 landless people and marginal farmers from 15-odd states who had started a march to Delhi on Saturday from Palwal in Haryana, about 60km away.

via NorthEast Calling http://ift.tt/1BPkZur