The Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government on Tuesday refused a proposal by the Centre to set up a temporary “jail” for protesting farmers at the capital’s Bawana stadium. The Delhi government said that a request was made by the Union Home Ministry regarding the same.
“The demands of the farmers are genuine. It is the constitutional right of every citizen to protest peacefully,” AAP announced in a post on X (formerly Twitter) adding that farmers are ‘annadatas’.
The development comes as thousands of farmers from across Punjab began moving towards Delhi demanding a legal guarantee of minimum support price (MSP) and loan waivers among others. Meanwhile, the Delhi Police have deployed concrete slabs, iron nails, barricades and barbed wires on the borders to stop the protesting farmers marching towards Delhi.
The Bawana stadium in the northern part of the capital has an interesting history vis-à-vis the Aam Aadmi Party as it was the site where the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was detained briefly during a demonstration in 2012 at the height of the “India Against Corruption” movement. The AAP government had also refused a similar proposal by the centre to convert the stadium into temporary jail for farmers during the farmers’ protest in 2020.
When Kejriwal Was Jailed In Bawana
During the “India Against Corruption” movement in 2012 against the UPA government led by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Kejriwal and scores of his supporters were put at a makeshift jail inside Bawana Stadium while protesting for the resignation of then Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid.
The Bawana Stadium, spread across an area of 14 acres, is located near Delhi’s border with Haryana.
Kejriwal was detained while he was marching towards the Prime Minister’s residence demanding the resignation of Khurshid. He was protesting against Khurshid’s NGO allegedly siphoning off funds for the disabled, and demanding the arrest of Khurshid and his wife Louise.
The protestors were stopped from marching and forcefully removed from the dharna and moved to Bawana stadium. He had been kept in the makeshift jail for 24 hours in Bawana.
After being released, Kejriwal along with his supporters refused to leave even after being later released by the police. They then headed to the Parliament Street Police Station to continue his protest.
AAP Rejected Similar Proposal In 2020
The stadium, located around 35 km away from Lutyens’s Delhi, was also linked to the 2020-2021 farmer’s protest and previous agitations against the centre in the past.
The Delhi government rejected similar requests by the Delhi Police in November 2020 to use the city's nine stadiums including Bawana as temporary prisons the previous during the farmers' protest.
Former Delhi Home Minister Satyendar Jain refused permission by saying, “The farmers' demands are legitimate. Jailing them isn't the solution to the issue. Their demands must be accepted.”
AAP leader Raghav Chadha had also defended farmers’ right to protest and opposed any move to set up temporary prisons in the capital.
The farmers’ protest, which started in 2020 against the centre’s now-repealed farm laws at three Delhi border points - Ghazipur, Singhu, and Tikri, concluded after a 14-month-long agitation in December 2021.