Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Jan 22: The talks between the farmers unions and the central government again ended in a stalemate on Friday and without even holding out a promise of meeting again to crack the deadlock leaving it to the agitating farmers to continue to shiver in the freezing winter nights on the borders of Delhi.
After the 11th round of meeting, the union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar said it was now for the farmers to seek the next round of meeting if they accept the government’s proposal to suspend the implementation of the three contentious acts up to a period of 18 months paving way for setting up a joint committee to discuss the contentious points in the three acts. “We gave a proposal to farmers and if they have a better proposal then they can come to us,” he said.
Tomar also “thanked” the farmers unions for cooperation virtually heralding the end of negotiations between the two sides. “There are no problems in the laws but the government still offered to suspend them as respect for farmers,” Tomar claimed.
Shiv Kumar Kakka, National President, Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Mahasangh, outlined the farmers’ version of the meeting. “The ministers asked us to consider the government’s proposal and we asked them to consider ours. After that, the ministers left the meeting.”
As the news about the meeting ending in the deadlock spread, hundreds of tractors from various points in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand started rolling towards Delhi to participate in the Republic Day tractor rally which promises to throw a challenge to the law and order machinery of the three states bordering with Delhi. The farmers unions had announced holding of the tractor rally as an expression of protest against the three farm laws.
Like the talks on the repeal of the three acts, the farmers’ talks with the Delhi and Haryana police to chart out the route map and limiting the number of participants in the tractor rally has also so far eluded solution. While the police insist that the farmers could take out the proposed rally on the Kundli–Manesar–Palwal highway away from the national capital, the farmers are insisting on the Delhi’s outer Ring Road for the show claiming that it would remain peaceful and in no way interfere with the official Republic Day parade on Delhi’s Rajpath. “If the police want the rally to be taken out peacefully, they will not interfere with our plans, but if the police use force, the government will have to face the consequences,” some farmer leaders warned.
The previous ten rounds of discussions regarding the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance, and Farm Services Act, 2020, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020 also did not yield any results as farmers continue to demand a total repeal of these laws.
The fate of Friday’s talks was as good as sealed when after Thursday’s marathon meeting the farm unions decided to reject the government’s offer to suspend its implementation and the farmers reiterating on their hitherto unwavering demand of repeal of the three laws.
According to the minutes of 11th round of meeting that brought the situation back to the mid-October status when the first rounds of talks started between the leaders of 41 farmers’ unions and three ministers led by Tomar, it began with the central ministers expressing anguish over the farm leaders announcing before the media on Thursday night that the government’s proposal for temporary suspension of the acts was not acceptable to them.
The government like in the previous meeting again asked the unions to reconsider their decision and discuss it again among themselves. The unions met separately, and again decided to stick to their stance. The meeting then took a lunch break and finally ended in a deadlock.
The farm leaders said one of the reasons for their rejecting the government offer was the legal advice they received that the government had no power to suspend the implementation of the acts passed by Parliament. It either has to go to the Supreme Court to stay their implementation or take it back to Parliament to amend o repeal the acts. The government’s offer to suspend their implementation was only an eye-wash and had no legal sanctity, the legal experts said.
The former BJP union minister Yashwant Sinha also in a Twitter message said the government had no powers to suspend implementation of an act once passed by Parliament.
The protesting farmers also plan to display tableaux of different states during their R-Day tractor parade.
“If all goes well, we will display tableaux of all states during the tractor parade,” Chaudhary Joginder Ghasi Ram Nain, a Bhartiya Kisan Union leader from Haryana, said.
Talking about the meeting with Delhi Police, some farm leaders said, “We have made it clear that the farmers will undertake a tractor parade on the Outer Ring Road of Delhi on January 26. We have asked the administration to give permission for the same and also make arrangements by managing the traffic and getting vacated the road for the tractor parade. We have assured the officers that we don’t have any plan to interrupt the official Republic Day parade.”
The farmer leaders claimed that lakhs of tractors were expected to join the tractor parade from different parts of the country.