A ‘protesting’ farmer died after collapsing all of a sudden while trying to disrupt the convoy of senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Patiala candidate Preneet Kaur.
Meanwhile, the rival political parties rushed to make political capital out of the incident, although the BJP candidate was not even remotely linked with the death.
While there is no post-mortem report so far, eyewitnesses and a video of the incident, which was widely circulated in media, suggested that the farmer, Surinderpal Singh, 45, collapsed all of a sudden and was reported dead. Medical experts after watching the video of his collapse suggested cardiac arrest as the most likely reason for his sudden collapse and death.
Ms Kaur mourned the “sad and unfortunate” death of the farmer. As a mark of respect to the departed soul and to express solidarity with the bereaved family, Ms Kaur cancelled all her campaign programmes for the day and tomorrow.
“I am deeply saddened by the demise of the farmer Surendra Pal Singh who unfortunately died today”, she said in her condolence message to the family, while adding, “me and my family have always stood by the farmers and we will continue to do so”.
She said, given the long association of her family with the farmers, “they are all like our brothers and sisters to us”. She assured that she and her family will stand by them till their last breath.
The Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Badal seized the opportunity to blame the BJP and the AAP. He wrote on ‘X’, “The anti-farmer BJP-AAP alliance is continuously denying justice to farmers which has resulted in the death of a farmer today. BJP is not agreeing to the demand of farmers on MSP while the AAP government refused to take action against Haryana Police which attacked our farmers with rubber bullets and live ammunition”.
“My deep sympathies with the family of the farmer Surinderpal Singh who succumbed during a farmer protest in Patiala”, he said, while suspending his Punjab Bachao Yatra for a day tomorrow.
Not to be left behind, the Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring directly sought to blame the BJP. He said, “How many more farmers will the BJP kill, how long will our farmer brothers continue to cry like this?”
“The standard of the BJP has fallen to such an extent that they do not care about the lives of our farmers at all”, he alleged.
The “protesting” farmers have been routinely disrupting the campaign of the BJP candidates and sometimes that of the ruling AAP candidates.
Some of them have occupied the rail tracks thus disrupting the train traffic north of Delhi. With elections going on and no party wanting to be perceived as against them, the farmers have been given a free run to hold the entire system to ransom.
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