Farmers Movement Archive

Farmers reject talks offer, say Burari is a jail

“If you shift to the Burari grounds, then the very next day the Centre government will hold talks with you, with a high level committee of Union Ministers at Vigyan Bhavan,” said the letter. The Punjab and Haryana farmers unions held an internal consultation on Sunday morning, and decided they would stay put at the Singhu and Tikri border crossing points. They vowed not to allow any political party on their protest stage, to defuse allegations of vested interests driving the campaign. On his part, Mr. Shah said he was not attributing such motives to the agitation. “I never called the farmers’ protest politically motivated, neither am I calling it now,” he told news agency ANI in Hyderabad, where he is campaigning for the municipal elections. Leaders also expressed scepticism about the government’s offer for talks, saying that two previous rounds of dialogue had shown that the government had nothing to offer, and there had been no concrete response to the specific concerns and demands that farmers had presented in writing. “Instead of responding to the main demands of repealing of three black laws and the withdrawal of the Electricity Bill, 2020 the government is doing its best to move the debate to where the farmers should camp,” said a statement from the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee, one of the alliances leading the protest.

The Hindu

2020-11-30

November 30 2020 00:00 IST