Farmers lay siege to Reliance show room in Sonipat, force it to close down

Following the call given by farmers’ organizations to boycott products and facilities owned by Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, hundreds of protesters forced a Reliance Smart showroom in Sonipat to close down on Thursday afternoon.

Chanting anti-Adani, anti-Ambani slogans, farmers gheraoed the facility and began a dharna at the gate of the facility which continued till Friday.

Saying that the Modi government brought the ‘anti-farmers’, ‘anti-poor’ farm laws to benefit corporates, farmers laid a siege at the showroom and vowed to not leave the protest site until the government repealed these laws.

Employees of the Reliance showroom fled the facility following the protests, said one of the protesters.

Talking to NH, Sumit, who is associated with ‘Chhara Ekta’ said, “They (corporates) have been looting the people of India for a long time but ever since the Modi government came to power, they have become even more arrogant. Ambani behaves as if he is the owner of the country”.

He told NH that though the police forced the protesters to disperse at night, they came back to the site in larger numbers in the morning.

Blaming the Modi government for using “dictatorial means” to get the farm laws passed in Parliament, a farmer said they have divided the people along religion and caste so that they could benefit from ‘blood sucking’ corporates.

“However, the situation has changed now. Farmers who would have committed suicide for Rs 20,000 are up in the arms against the corporates, who will have to face the music,” said another protester.

“People now know that this whole anti-farmer atmosphere has been created with the money pumped in by these corporates,” added the protesters.

Meanwhile, a Hindi website, Janjwar, claimed that Facebook has been creating problems in uploading a video with anti-Modi content on its Facebook page. Editor of the website, Ajay Prakash said the video exposed the nexus between the Modi government and cronies like Ambani and Adani. He later uploaded the video on YouTube.

Ajay said such incidents have happened in the past also. “Facebook’s internal scrutiny system automatically creates problems in uploading anti-Modi content,” he said.

This is not the first time that Facebook has been accused of working as a pro-Modi, pro-BJP social media platform. A few months back, a major controversy erupted after American media exposed how Facebook public policy director in India, Ankhi Das favoured BJP, allowing hate speeches by BJP politicians on its platform in the run-up to 2019 Lok Sabha election. Although Das had to resign following worldwide criticism, Facebook in its response claimed it was neutral.