With Shivraj Singh Chouhan in attendance, the fifth round of negotiations between the central team, led by Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Pralhad Joshi, and the protesting farmers, primarily from Punjab and Haryana, came to an end on Friday. The parties agreed to meet again on February 22.
Chandigarh or New Delhi are most likely to host the gathering.
In order to address their concerns, including a legal guarantee for the minimum support price (MSP), a 28-member delegation of farmers, including Sarwan Singh Pandher and Jagjit Singh Dallewal, the head of the fasting movement, met with the Centre.
After the meeting, Dallewal, who had driven four hours to get here in an ambulance, informed reporters that the government had invited the farmers to another meeting on February 22 with Shivraj Singh Chouhan in attendance. "The conference came to a successful conclusion. The cabinet has called a second meeting, which Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and two other ministers would attend on February 22. The conference's site would be decided later, but it might be in Delhi or Chandigarh," he said.
Both sides had dinner at the site during the roughly three-hour discussion, which was held in a cordial atmosphere, according to government sources. DGP Gaurav Yadav, Punjab Agriculture Minister Gurmeet Singh Khudian, Chief Secretary KAP Sinha, and Additional Chief Secretary (Agriculture) Anurag Verma also participated in the talks.
The Union government gave farmers a five-year contract during their most recent meeting on February 18, 2024, whereby it will buy pulses, maize, and cotton at MSP. Following four rounds of talks between the Centre and the farmers who were protesting, the farmers turned down this offer.
Union Minister Joshi was followed by Union Secretary of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Devesh Chaturvedi. This meeting came after four rounds of negotiations between the federal administration and the irate farmers in February of last year.
Punjab's chief minister, Bhagwant Mann, participated in the February 8, 12, 15, and 18 meetings last year, but the talks failed to come to an agreement. For a year, farmers have been staging a sit-in protest at Shambhu, which is the border between Punjab and Haryana.
Farmer leader Sarwan Singh Pandher told reporters that they would attempt to convince the Centre to accommodate the farmers' requests at Shambhu, where a Mahapanchayat was held on Thursday to mark a year of the protest.
The Dallewal-led Bharatiya Kisan Union (Sidhupur) and Pandher-led Kisan Mazdoor Sangarsh Committee (KMSC), both operating under the auspices of Sanyukt Kisan Morcha (non-political), have been encamped at the boundaries of Shambhu and Khanauri since February 13 of last year after security forces prevented them from marching to Delhi to make their demands known.
Before security forces used tear gas shells, protesting farmers at the Shambhu border had attempted three times to march towards Delhi.
Shambhu, the National Highway-1 crossing site near Ambala, was the focal point of the farmers' protests for a year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in his nationally broadcast address on November 19, 2021, that the government has decided to revoke the three controversial agriculture regulations that had been passed. This ended the 13-month-long protests by farmers at the Delhi borders, mostly from Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh.
Thousands of farmers had been camping outside the border crossings in Delhi, demanding the removal of three farm restrictions and a legal guarantee on the MSP for their crops.
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