Center and Farmers Meeting: Amid the ongoing farmers’ protest at Shambhu and Khanauri borders over demands for the legal guarantee of Minimum Support Price (MSP) and other issues, the sixth meeting between the central government and the farmers’ delegation in Chandigarh also ended without any resolution. The meeting, which lasted for two and a half hours, did not yield any concrete outcome. The next meeting will be held on March 19.
The meeting was attended by Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Union Ministers Pralhad Joshi and Piyush Goyal, along with Punjab government’s Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema, Agriculture Minister Gurmeet Singh Khudian, and Food Processing Minister Lalchand Kataruchak.
The 28-member farmers’ delegation included leaders like Sarwan Singh Pandher, Abhimanyu Kohad, Kaka Singh Kotda, Sukhjeet Singh, Arun Sinha, Lakhwinder Singh, Jaswinder Longowal, MS Rai, Nand Kumar, Balwant Singh Behramke, and Inderjeet Singh Kotbudha.
Farmers remained adamant about their demand for MSP on 23 crops, while the central government is offering MSP on two or three additional crops. Currently, the government provides MSP for 18 crops.
After the meeting, Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan told the media that the meeting took place in a good atmosphere. Some data were requested, and both the farmers and the central government have their own data, which will be compared. Chouhan, Joshi, and Goyal appealed to farmer leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal to end his hunger strike, but Dallewal said that he would not end the strike until there is a guarantee of MSP on all crops.
Upon arriving at the meeting, Shivraj Singh Chouhan immediately approached Jagjit Singh Dallewal and inquired about his health. He later met with other farmer leaders. Dallewal, who was on an indefinite hunger strike at Khanauri Border, was brought to Chandigarh’s Sector-26 for the meeting with the central government via ambulance.
Before the meeting, farmer leader Sarwan Pandher had announced that if they did not receive a positive response in the meeting, a group of 101 farmers, led by senior farmer leaders, would march to Delhi on February 25. Earlier, a similar meeting between the center and farmers held in Chandigarh on February 14 also ended without any outcome after more than three hours of discussions.
