‘Ready to hold talks with Centre but we will first discuss repealing the three new farm laws,’ say farm union leaders
Sticking to their demands, farmer leaders on Saturday said they are ready to hold talks with the government but demanded that first they should be allowed to discuss repealing the three new farm laws, as they announced to intensify their ongoing protests against the legislations.
Addressing a press conference at the Singhu Border, farmer leader Kanwalpreet Singh Pannu said that thousands of farmers will start their “Delhi Chalo” march from Rajasthan's Shahjahanpur through the Jaipur-Delhi Highway at 11 am on Sunday. He also said that farmers from other parts of the country are also on their way to join the protesters in Delhi.
“If the government wants to hold talks, we are ready, but our main demand will remain the scrapping of the three laws. We will move onto our other demands only after that,” the farmer leader said. Many farm union leaders will also sit on a hunger strike between 8 am to 5 pm on December 14 against the new agriculture laws, Pannu added.
He further alleged that the government tried to weaken the agitation, but that the protesting farmers did not let it happen. The farmer leader also vowed to continue with peaceful protests.
The government on Friday asked the protesting farmers to be vigilant against their platform being misused, saying some “antisocial” as well as “Leftist and Maoist” elements were conspiring to spoil the atmosphere of the agitation which has been going on for over two weeks now.
Photographs of some protesters at the Tikri border seen holding posters demanding release of activists arrested under various charges had gone viral, prompting Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar to say that these “antisocial elements” are conspiring to spoil the atmosphere of the peasants' movement.
Enacted in September, the three farm laws have been projected by the government as major reforms in the agriculture sector that will remove middlemen and allow farmers to directly sell their produce anywhere in the country.
However, the protesting farmers have expressed apprehension that the new laws would pave way for eliminating the safety cushion of minimum support price and do away with the mandi system, leaving them at the mercy of big corporates.