“Ab aur badhega kisano par atiyachar, aagayi hai kamini Modi sarkar” – Kanhaiya Kumar’s new slogan

Mehsana: Kanhaiya Kumar while addressing people at Somnath chowk before taking out ‘Freedom March’ on the first anniversary of Una flogging incident attacked the BJP governments at the Centre and in Gujarat, claiming that atrocities on Dalits and Muslims have increased under them. He raised new slogan against Modi-led Central Govt., “Ab aur badhega kisano par atiyachar, aagayi hai kamini Modi sarkar”

He also alleged that people who dare to speak truth are booked under sedition charges to silence them.

Dalit agitation spearhead Jignesh Mevani, Kanhaiya Kumar and 15 others were detained on Wednesday for taking out march allegedly without permission, the police said.

Mevani, who is the convener of Rashtriya Dalit Adhikar Manch, had invited Kumar to take part in the ‘Azadi Kooch’ (Freedom March) in Mehsana.

A number of Dalit activists gathered at Somnath Chowk in Mehsana before embarking on the march towards Banaskantha district this afternoon, the police said.

The Mehsana district authorities had cancelled the permission granted earlier to Mevani for taking out the march.

“We have detained 17 persons from Fatehpura circle. Later, an FIR was registered under IPC section 143 against them for being a part of an illegal assembly.

“We did not arrest them. They were let go afterwards,” an official of the Mehsana ‘A’ division police station, where the FIR has been lodged, said.

As per the schedule, ‘Freedom March’ will end at Dhanera town of Banaskantha district of north Gujarat after one week.

The key agenda of this march is to mount pressure on the Gujarat government to allocate agricultural land to Dalits, so that they can start a new life with dignity, Mevani had announced last month.

After being released, co-convener of the manch, Kaushik Parmar, who is also named in the FIR, announced that the march will continue as they have the permission to enter Unjha, their next destination.

“We have been released by police after the FIR was registered against us. We have decided to continue our march. We are planning to reach Unjha by tonight,” Parmar told PTI.

In Una, Dalit youths were paraded and flogged for allegedly skinning a dead cow, an incident that caused nation-wide outrage after its video went viral

With inputs from PTI