Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Friday, 27 November, took to Twitter to urge the Central government to begin talks with the farmer Union leaders to defuse the tense situation at the Delhi border.
While the police clamped down on protesters in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana to stop them marching to Delhi, the Punjab CM asked the Centre “to show statesmanship and accept the farmers' demand for assured MSP (minimum support price), which is the basic right of every farmer.”
A day after the Congress leader was accused of encouraging the protests, he reminded the Centre that “those claiming it’s Congress that's instigating the farmers are blind not to see the lakhs of farmers trying to enter Delhi from across the country. It's a fight for their lives and livelihoods and they don't need any backing or provocation.”
Farmers Register Protests Against Farm Laws
Thousands of farmers from hundreds of farmer delegations are participating in the march to express their discontentment with the NDA government’s agriculture laws.
The Centre has invited farmer Unions on 3 December, 2020, for a second round of deliberations with Union ministers. Earlier, on 13 November, a meeting with Agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar had ended inconclusively.
Farmers also faced water cannons at the state border as they pushed against and broke police barriers in a bid to continue their march to Delhi. To this, a police chief said, “We are taking all necessary steps to ensure law and order is maintained.”
Punjab CM Singh also reminded the Centre that “the voice of farmers cannot be muzzled indefinitely” in his tweet on Friday.
(With inputs from NDTV)
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