Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar calls farmers' 10-day protest 'issue-less'; says organisers only hurting rural income

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Saturday mocked the 10-day farmers’ protest that has been launched across seven states in the country by calling it “issue-less”.

“Kisan hartal (farmers’ strike) doesn’t have any purpose or topic. This protest is unnecessary,” Khattar said. He then added that the organisers of the strike were only harming the farmers as they wouldn’t be able to sell their produce for ten days. “By saying they won’t sell farmers’ produce they’ll only cause losses to the farmers,” the Haryana chief minister said, according to ANI.

#WATCH: Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar speaks on farmers' strike, says, 'they don't have any issues, they are just focusing on unnecessary things, not selling produce will bring losses to farmers.' (01.06.2018) pic.twitter.com/CFY7dzgj2g

— ANI (@ANI) June 2, 2018

Earlier, the Rashtriya Kisan Mahasangh (RMK) who is leading the protests, had announced that farmers won’t supply vegetables and milk to cities for the next ten days, after which the ‘g_aon bandh_’ will turn into a ‘Bharat bandh’ if their demands are not met.

On Friday, large quantities of milk was spilled on roads in Maharashtra and Rajasthan while in Punjab, vegetables were publicly destroyed by protestors. The farmers are demanding a blanket waiver of farm loans, a minimum support price (MSP) for farm produce and the rate for milk at Rs 50 per litre, among other things.

However, not all states are participating in the strike. According to Deccan Chronicle , farmers in Bhopal claimed that they were not facing any problem. “We don’t want any type of agitation and we are not even a part of it. This is a conspiracy of the political parties”, one of them remarked.