Call special Parliament session to repeal farm laws: Farmers to government

Singhu Border, Delhi: Agitating farmer organisations said ahead of the fourth round of talks with the Centre on Thursday that the government must call a special session of Parliament to repeal the new farm laws and that until this happens they will continue their protest and escalate it to completely block Delhi. Terming Tuesday’s talks with the government a “failure”, farmer leader Darshan Pal said they were clear that the government should scrap the new farm laws or insert a legal guarantee into the laws that minimum support price (MSP), public procurement and mandis would continue as earlier.

“Till that happens, we will continue to sit on Delhi’s borders and will escalate our protests in the coming days by blocking all borders of Delhi. Farmers from various other states are joining us. We will hand over our point-by-point objections to the new laws to the government at the meeting tomorrow — that document is ready,” Pal said at the biggest protest site at the Singhu border, where the crowd of protestors had swelled considerably on Wednesday.

Farmer leader Gurnam Singh Charuni, who had also attended Tuesday’s meeting with central ministers, told ET that he had made it clear at the meeting that the laws were a “maut ka farmaan” (death warrant) for farmers after the government indicated it was in no mood to withdraw the laws. “Ministers are speaking the same language as the PM and saying the laws are for our welfare. We told them not to do such welfare for us, and about our apprehension that our land will be taken over by corporates. We don’t expect any solution at tomorrow’s meeting,” said Charuni.


The government had made a detailed presentation before the farmers at the three-hour long meeting on Tuesday, explaining how the crop purchase on MSP had increased under the Narendra Modi regime, according to people aware of the matter. They said agriculture minister NS Tomar said at the meeting that the MSP guarantee could not be inserted into the new laws as these laws had nothing to do with the MSP but would “empower farmers” to get a better price for their produce.

Tomar and minister of state Som Prakash also said that PM Modi had given his word that the MSP and mandi system would continue. “If this is so, why is the government not ready to put down that assurance in writing in the law?” said farmer leader Darshan Pal.

Meanwhile, Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh has decided to meet Union home minister Amit Shah on Thursday morning in Delhi, a few hours before the fourth round of talks between the government and farmers’ representatives.