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Hundreds of farmers on Tuesday laid siege to the Amritsar-Delhi railway track, demanding the clearance of sugarcane dues from a sugar mill at Naranjanpur village near Rayya town, 40 km from here.
The farmers blocked the tracks at 2pm after which the Delhi-Amritsar Flying Mail and Nangal Dam Express that plies between Amritsar and Nangal were halted, causing inconvenience passengers.
Activists of the Kisan Sangharsh Committee (KSC) have been protesting outside Rana Sugar Mill in Amritsar’s Butter Seviyan village since Sunday. They shifted the protest to the tracks once the ultimatum for meeting their demand for clearance of dues ended on Tuesday afternoon.
The farmers also blocked the Amritsar-Khemkaran track near Gohalwar village in Tarn Taran district.
Police detained hundreds of farmers early on Tuesday yet many others managed to reach the tracks.
“Instead of clearing our dues, the mill also stopped taking sugarcane from us. We informed the administration about our decision to block the tracks. The officials should release our leaders,” said KSC vice-president Jasbir Singh Piddi.
However, Kapurthala Congress MLA and Rana Group co-founder Rana Gurjit Singh denied any non-payment of dues. “Nothing is pending. We are not taking sugarcane from seven farmers because they misbehaved. We have not been buying their cane for the past three years,” he said.
