Image credit : Illustrative image

Coimbatore : The farmers protesting against the erection of high voltage electricity towers in agricultural land intensified their agitation on the fifth day today in Tirupur.

The vegetable markets and farmers’ shandy in Tirupur district and also at Coimbatore did not function to express solidarity with the agitating farmers.

About 100 farmers stayed top less as part of their agitation and wore flame shaped ‘thirunamam’ on their forehead in Tirupur and raised slogans against the proposed project to install the electric transmission lines in the agriculture lands, which they claimed will destroy the fertility of the land and also the crops.

A few shops in and around Tirupur downed their shutters in support of the demand by the farmers, who had pleaded the Government to cancel the project and instead take the lines along the highways.

Majority of the shops in Sulur on the city outskirts were closed to express solidarity with the farmers, police said.