Indian Railways has cancelled 19 trains due to farmers’ agitation in Punjab’s Firozpur railway division, news agency ANI reported on Saturday. The report comes just hours after sugarcane farmers blocked highway, railway track in Jalandhar, demanding clearance of their dues.
“If government doesn’t hold talks with us by today evening, then we will give Punjab Bandh call. We will try to avoid imposing a bandh from tomorrow due to Rakhi,” MS Rai of BKU-Doaba was quoted as saying by ANI.
Rail passengers travelling for ”Raksha Bandhan” festival on Sunday bore the maximum brunt of the blockade.
Emergency vehicles have, however, been allowed to run, they added.
Protesters have blocked the Jalandhar-Phagwara stretch of the national highway near Dhanowali village of Jalandhar district.
The blockade affected vehicular movement to and from Jalandhar, Amritsar and Pathankot, though the administration diverted the traffic through some alternative routes.
Farmers sitting on the Jalandhar-Chaheru section have blocked the Ludhiana-Amritsar and the Ludhiana-Jammu rail tracks in Jalandhar, affecting several trains, including the Amritsar-New Delhi Swarna Shatabdi EXP SPL (02030), Amritsar-Dehradun EXP SPL (04664), New Delhi-Amritsar Shatabdi SPL (02013), and the New Delhi-Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra Shri Shakti SPL (02461).
They are demanding that the Punjab government raise the state assured price (SAP) of sugarcane and clear payment of arrears of Rs 200 crore-250 crores.
