Jagjit Singh Dallewal
| Photo Credit:
PTI
A day after an appeal from Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Punjab’s farmer leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal ended his “indefinite fast” on Sunday. The fast had begun on November 26 last year to press for dialogue amid a deadlock over the demand for a legal guarantee of the minimum support price (MSP) for crops.
On Saturday, Chouhan issued an appeal from Madhya Pradesh, which is now seen as a face-saving attempt to facilitate the senior farmer leader’s decision to end his hunger strike. In the last few rounds of meetings, the Centre had made similar appeals to Dallewal to end the strike, which he had consistently refused.
Chouhan had said: “The ongoing dialogue between the representatives of the Government of India and the representatives of farmers’ organisations regarding their demands is continuing. Farmer leader Shri Jagjit Singh Dallewal has now returned from hospital and we wish him a speedy recovery. We also request him to end his hunger strike and we will meet with the representatives of the farmers’ organisations for talks at 11 am on May 4 as per the already decided date.”
Addressing a ‘Kisan Mahapanchayat’ organised at Sirhind in Fatehgarh Sahib district of Punjab on Sunday, Dallewal announced that he was ending his indefinite fast. “You (farmers) all have asked me to end the fast unto death. I am indebted to you for taking care of the agitation. I respect your sentiments. I accept your order,” he said.
After the last meeting with the Central team led by Shivraj Singh Chouhan on March 19, when farmer leaders began moving towards the two protest sites at Shambhu and Khanauri on the Haryana-Punjab border, the Punjab government detained all of them and began clearing the areas that very night. By the next day, the protest sites were completely cleared and traffic was normalised on two highways.
The Centre has assured farmer leaders that it will undertake consultations with stakeholders — including exporters, processors, farmer producer organisations (FPOs), traders, and stockists — who are the main buyers of farm produce before it reaches consumer households. The Centre will also hold discussions with State governments on the likely impact and various options for enforcing MSP on buyers. The consultation process is likely to be led by Joint Secretary (Marketing) Purna Chandra Kishan.
The meeting was resumed in February after a year-long protest by farmers led by the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (Non-Political) and the Kisan Mazdoor Morcha, as talks between the Centre and farmers had collapsed in February 2024. Four rounds of meetings were held between Central ministers and the protesting farmers in February 2024, but the talks broke down after farmer leaders rejected the Centre’s proposal for assured government procurement of certain pulses, cotton, and maize at MSP for five years.
Besides a legal guarantee for crop MSP, the farmers are also 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 the 2020-21 agitation.
Published on April 6, 2025
