A five-member committee was formed to plan elections.
Punjab Farmers’ Union Splits: Leaders Push to Remove Jagjit Singh Dallewal
On Tuesday, the Bharti Kisan Union (Ekta-Sidhupur), a significant farmers’ organisation in Punjab, appeared to split into two factions after senior office-bearers, block presidents and district presidents from eight districts demanded the removal of president Jagjit Singh Dallewal. The demand was made at a meeting held at Gurdwara Sahib Patshahi Nauvin in Bahadurgarh near Patiala, where the dissidents declared Dalbir Singh Sidhupur, son of the union’s founder Pishora Singh Sidhupur, as convener of the new faction.
Participants at the meeting accused Dallewal of an authoritarian style of functioning and said they refused to work under his leadership. Dallewal is a well-known farm leader who fasted for 131 days last year, pressing for demands such as a legal guarantee for the minimum support price (MSP), and also led the Khanauri Morcha during the year-long Kisan Andolan 2.0, officials said.
Dalbir Singh told the media that organisational elections, which are supposed to be held every three years, had not taken place for six years. It leaves the union without a constitutionally valid president and without fresh recruitment. He alleged that Dallewal’s decisions, including staying away from the Samyukt Kisan Morcha and launching independent morchas at Shambhu and Khanauri, had failed to achieve results and even cost lives, with some farmers still searching for stolen tractors and other valuables.
Dalbir Singh claimed that after his father’s death, the leadership was entrusted to Dallewal with family consultation, but that unity suffered and key office-bearers were expelled. A five-member committee was formed to plan elections, and Dalbir Singh was appointed convener to oversee the process, according to the sources.
Dallewal was not available for comment. However, senior leader Kaka Singh Kotra said the organisation had not split and announced a conference in Jalandhar on Wednesday to issue a rebuttal to the dissenters’ claims, he told the media.
Source: The Tribune
