The meeting between a Central team led by Union Minister Pralhad Joshi and 28 farmer leaders which began in Chandigarh Friday evening ended inconclusive with an agreement that the next round will be held on February 22 when Union Agriculture Ministry Shivraj Singh Chouhan will also participate.
Briefing media after the 3-hour long meeting, farmer leader Abhimanyu Kohar said that Joshi requested fasting farmer leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal to end his indefinite fast. But all farmer leaders unanimously said that the fast will end only after the government accepts the demand for a legally enforced minimum support price (MSP).
Kohar also said that they have placed several documents before the panel on their demands which the Central team wanted to go through it before responding to their suggestions. The farmer leaders also requested the team to hold the next meeting in Delhi as it will be convenient for leaders coming from other States (than Punjab and Haryana) to join the discussion.
The meeting was held after a year-long protest by farmers led by the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (Non-Political) and the Kisan Mazdoor Morcha.
Four rounds of meetings
Four rounds of meetings took place between central ministers and the protesting farmers in February 2024 but the talks ended after farmer leaders rejected the suggestions of assured government procurement of some pulses, oilseeds, cotton and maize at MSP for five years.
Union minister Joshi was accompanied by senior officials of the agriculture ministry including Secretary Devesh Chaturvedi, Additional Secretary Maninder Kaur Dwivedi, Joint Secretary Purna Chandra Kisan and Joint Secretary in Food Ministry C Shikha. Punjab’s agriculture minister Gurmeet Singh Khuddian and food and civil supplies minister Lal Chand Kataruchak, Chief Secretary KAP Sinha and DGP Gaurav Yadav, were also present at the meeting on Friday.
Besides a legal guarantee for crop MSP, the farmers are demanding a debt waiver, pension for farmers and farm labourers, no hike in electricity tariffs, withdrawal of police cases, “justice” for the victims of the 2021 Lakhimpur Kheri violence, reinstatement of the Land Acquisition Act 2013 and compensation to the families of farmers who died during a previous agitation in 2020-21.