Ahead of the next round of talks, farm unions warned on Friday that they will begin closing all shopping malls and gas pumps in Haryana if the government does not resolve their main demands to repeal three new farm laws and a legal guarantee for MSP in January. 4 meeting.
After the sixth round of formal negotiations on Wednesday, the government and agricultural unions had reached common ground to resolve the concerns of farmers protesting the increase in electricity rates and penalties for stubble burning, but the two parties remained stagnant on the main contentious issues of the repeal of three agricultural laws and legal guarantee for MSP.
At a press conference at the site of the Singhu border protest on Friday, representatives of the farmers’ unions said that only five percent of the issues raised by them so far have been discussed in meetings with the government. They outlined multiple protest actions over a month if their main demands are not met, in an announcement just days before the Republic Day celebrations.
Peasant leader Yudhveer Singh said that if the central government believes that the peasant protest will go the way of Shaheen Bagh, it is wrong. “They (the government) cannot force us to leave this place like they did in Shaheen Bagh,” he said.
The All Indian Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) in a statement issued to the media criticized “pro-corporate intellectuals who discuss the compromise formula” and said that farmers are clear that “they will not settle for less than repeal the three laws because these bills turn over agricultural markets, agricultural processes, farmers’ land and food security to businesses, and it is clear that the government has declared acceptance of two minor issues to cover its inflexible position ” .
Meanwhile, at a meeting of Samkyukt Kisan Morcha, a body comprising some 40 farmers’ unions protesting at various border points in Delhi, various decisions were made. According to the unions, if the results of the January 4 talks are not satisfactory, a tractor march will be pulled from the protest site to the Kundli-Manesar-Palwal Highway (KMP) on January 6 and a call. to protesting farmers in Shahjahanpur, on the Haryana-Rajasthan border, to advance towards the national capital.
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