Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) senior leader and spokesperson Rakesh Tikait, who has been having a splendid time trying to build a political and electoral appeal for himself at the cost of farmers and their lives, has now been rendered lonely. Tikait who was supportive of the agitations continuing forever has now been named in the Delhi Police’s FIR which incriminates all senior farm union leaders for effectuating violence in the national capital on Republic Day. If that was not enough, various farmer unions are now coming out in the open and revealing their disgust for Tikait.
Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan leader VM Singh, for example, said his organisation is withdrawing from the farmers’ protest with immediate effect because the format of the protest is “unacceptable” to it.”I have nothing to do with the protest which is being led by them and over here being represented by Rakesh Tikait on their behalf…We can’t carry forward a protest with someone whose direction is something else. So, I wish them the best but VM Singh and Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan are withdrawing from this protest right away,” Singh was quoted as saying.
And then, Thakur Bhanu Pratap Singh, president of Bharatiya Kisan Union (Bhanu) said he too is withdrawing from the protest and is pained to see the violence in Delhi.” I am deeply pained by whatever happened in Delhi yesterday and am ending our 58-day protest,” he told ANI. The two unions are said to have been uncomfortable with Rakesh Tikait and his faction from the very beginning, and on Wednesday finally dissociated from the protests at the western borders of Delhi.
It must be remembered that Rakesh Tikait from the very first day of the anarchist agitations had been hogging the limelight and projecting himself to the media as the person solely responsible for galvanising the opinion of farmers against the three reforms passed by parliament in September last year. Now, however, the man has been named as a conspirator to the Republic Day violence in the national capital and is being abandoned by fellow comrades for his ulterior motives to milk political mileage from the ongoing protests.
Not only is Tikait a political opportunist seeking to score electoral brownie points for himself under the shroud of farmers’ protest, but he is also a product of nepotism. Son of revolutionary farm leader Mahendra Singh Tikait, who was one of the founding members of the BKU, Rakesh has not amounted to even a fraction of what his father was back in the day. Rakesh Tikait had in June last year come out in wholehearted support of the three revolutionary farm laws, which he and his union are now up in arms against.
Hailing the reforms, Tikait had said that the reforms represented the fulfilment of a long-standing wish of India’s farmers. Now, the same man instigated violence in the national capital against the reforms. Rakesh Tikait is known to be an annoying specimen for not just Union ministers, but also various farmer leaders. Perhaps, lockup is the only venue which will knock some senses into the man.