Mumbai : The farmers' long march from Nashik to Mumbai will continue after their leaders' late night parleys with Maharashtra government to address their demands remained inconclusive, the march organisers said Thursday.
Farmers have embarked on a 180-km march from Nashik to Mumbai for the second time in the last 12 months to protest against what they termed as the "betrayal" of peasants by the BJP governments at the state and centre.
The Kisan Long March-2, expected to take over nine days to complete, is being organised by the CPI(M)-backed All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS).
The march could not be taken out Wednesday as police stopped many farmers from reaching Nashik, the AIKS claimed. Maharashtra minister Girish Mahajan met some AIKS representatives in Nashik Wednesday night.
"We held talks with the minister for over three hours.
The government appeared positive to 80 per cent of our demands. The minister said he would speak to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis first," AIKS president Ashok Dhawale said.
Dhawale said Mahajan informed AIKS representatives that the assurances would be given in writing. "The AIKS has decided to go ahead with the march beginning Thursday morning till the government does so," he added.
Dhawale said police were also present during the meeting with Mahajan. They (police) are not going to stop the farmers now, he added.
Mahajan could not be reached for his comment.
The AIKS has accused the government of not fulfilling assurances given to farmers last year after they marched between the two cities, seeking farm loan waiver, minimum support price for crops, irrigation facilities and provision of pension to agriculturists.
The AIKS also said it is opposed to the multi-billion dollar Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project which has seen several farmers along the proposed route approach court against land acquisition.
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Alappuzha (Kerala) (PTI): The Congress on Friday sharply reacted to the Income Tax Department's notice to the grand old party to pay a penalty of over Rs 1,750 crore and said the officials were being used as the "gundas" of the ruling BJP.
Addressing the media here, AICC general secretary in-charge of the organisation, K C Venugopal, lashed out at the Narendra Modi-led BJP government and accused it of trying to "financially strangulate" the opposition parties during the election time.
Venugopal said the Modi government was trying to make the Congress party bankrupt.
The Income Tax Department has served a notice to the Congress to pay over Rs 1750 crore, hours after the Delhi High Court had rejected its petitions challenging the tax reassessment proceedings against it.
"Usually, the political parties are exempted from paying taxes. However, this penalty is in the name of delay in filing returns. The Narendra Modi government is doing this with the specific purpose of bankrupting the Congress party at a time when we are facing elections," Venugopal said.
He said a nationwide protest will be held tomorrow and the day after as the BJP was "exploiting" the central agencies to target the opposition parties.
"They are attacking the opposition parties using the government mechanism. This is a move to butcher democracy," Venugopal added.
He also claimed that the BJP too has not paid any returns, but they were safe from IT Department notices.
"Our accounts were freezed earlier and now our funds have been blocked. The BJP regime is exploiting the government machinery to target the main opposition party as they know that they will face a huge setback in the upcoming elections," he said.
Venugopal said as per the notice, the Congress has been asked to pay Rs 1076.35 crore as penalty and Rs 692 crore as interest.
The Delhi High Court on Thursday rejected petitions by the Congress challenging the initiation of tax reassessment proceedings against it for a period of four years by tax authorities.
The High Court said that the pleas were dismissed in terms of its earlier decision refusing to interfere with the opening of reassessment for another period.
The present matter pertained to the assessment years 2017 to 2021.
In the earlier petition, which was dismissed last week, the Congress party had challenged initiation of reassessment proceedings pertaining to the assessment years 2014-15 to 2016-17.
On March 22, the high court, while rejecting those pleas, said that the tax authority had prima facie collated "substantial and concrete" evidence warranting further scrutiny and examination.