You should get rid of them to provide more metadata about this software.
debian/patches: 20 patches to forward upstream
low
Among the 21 debian patches
available in version 11.8.16-20 of the package,
we noticed the following issues:
20 patches
where the metadata indicates that the patch has not yet been forwarded
upstream. You should either forward the patch upstream or update the
metadata to document its real status.