An oxygen supply firm has charged that its oxygen trucks are being forced to take longer routes to reach Delhi hospitals due to blockades at key border points in an obvious reference to farmers protesting farm laws. 

After the oxygen supply firm’s claim, a debate has erupted over the morality of the farmers’ protest that began in November-end. Government officials claimed that a major oxygen supplier sought a green corridor for its trucks headed for Delhi, as these vehicles had to take a nearly 100-km detour from the supplier’s unit in Uttar Pradesh due to a blockade at Ghazipur border. A similar situation was being faced at Singhu border while ferrying oxygen from Panipat to Delhi.

The debate also triggered questions like whether farmers should call off their protest at Delhi’s borders and return home in the wake of the spike in Covid-19 cases that has left the capital on its knees and hands? 

The farmers have refused to budge, saying they have no plans of going back to their villages and that there is no coronavirus cases at protest sites. The protesting farmers have also rejected that they blocked oxygen supply trucks.

Meenakshi Lekhi, the BJP MP from New Delhi, urged the courts to pass an order to send them back given how the second wave is raging. She said,

“Will the farmers be happy if people die in hospitals because oxygen got delayed? Where does the commitment of the farmers lie?”

A senior government official said the protesting farmers were at risk of contracting Covid-19 and the protest sites could become super-spreaders. The official claimed that little social distancing or mask protocol was followed by farmers in the protest.

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Punjab Congress president Sunil Jakhar said it was totally up to the farmers if they wanted to suspend the protest in view of the second Covid wave. He rejected the argument that the farmers’ protest was responsible for the high Covid numbers in Punjab. Jakhar said the Central government has lost all credibility on the Covid front with the BJP throwing caution to the wind in its election rallies. The Centre has lost the moral authority as it first needs to practise what it preaches. No one believes their warnings on Covid when they themselves keep doing rallies.

Senior farmers’ leader and BKU president Balbir Singh Rajewal said farmers would neither call off their protest nor suspend it and go back.

“There is no Covid at all at the protest sites and even one case. So this whole talk is a big conspiracy against the farmers’ movement. The farmers believe that once the farmers go back to Punjab, the government will never allow them to return to Delhi.” 

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The farmer leader said protesters did not stop any oxygen supply truck while the police were manning the blockade sites and turning away vehicles. There are many roads and routes to Delhi, besides the ones blocked at Singhu and Ghazipur. The farmers have also alleged that other routes have been dug up and barricaded by the police themselves.

Thousands of farmers, mostly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, have been protesting at Delhi’s borders for close to five months, demanding the repeal of three farm laws passed by Parliament last year. Several rounds of talks between the Centre and the protesting farmer unions have yielded nothing. The government has offered suspending the laws for 18 months but the farmers want nothing short of the repeal of the laws.