Farmers ransack Sangamner sub-divisional office, break chairs in protest

Politics heated up in Sangamner on Thursday after a farmers' morcha led by senior Congress leader Balasaheb Thorat and his daughter Jayshri Thorat reached the office of the sub-divisional officer (SDO). The SDO, Arun Unde, was not present in the office at the time, so Balasaheb Thorat and Jayshri Thorat sat down on the road in front of the office gate and began a sit-in protest.

Seeing their leaders forced to sit at the gate, the farmers in the morcha grew furious. The angry farmers barged into the SDO's cabin, picked up the chairs kept there and threw them outside, while also raising slogans against the administration. The farmers said angrily, "The morcha has come to raise farmers' problems, and the SDO is absent -- this is the limit of the administration's negligence."

The morcha had been organised at the SDO's office over various farmer demands. But despite such a large morcha arriving at the office, the responsible officer remained absent, which further angered the protesters. Seeing that SDO Arun Unde was not at his desk, the Thorat father-daughter duo first began their protest by sitting at the gate, after which the situation worsened.

Sangamner taluka has been facing a severe power supply problem for the past few months, which has been steadily increasing anger among farmers. Notably, there is adequate water in the dams, but crops cannot be irrigated because of the lack of electricity. As a result, crops are drying up due to lack of water just as they were about to be ready for harvest. It was to draw the administration's attention to this problem that farmers had taken out the morcha directly to the SDO's office. But the SDO was not present at the office even during the morcha, which further angered the farmers, and the agitated farmers barged into the office and vandalised the chairs.

The entire episode caused a stir within the administration.