NEW DELHI, Jan 21: Virtually making the proposed 11th round of talks on Friday infructuous, the farmers’ unions are learnt to have rejected the central government’s proposal to hold the contentious agricultural laws on hold for 18 months to pave for withdrawal of the agitation pending a final solution.
The proposal was given by the union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar at the farmer – centre talks on Wednesday and the farmers representatives agreed to come back with their response to the proposal on Friday after discussing the issue among themselves.
But farmers union on Thursday rejected the proposal and said they want nothing but a complete withdrawal of all the three contentious agriculture laws. “In a full general body meeting of Samyukt Kisan Morcha today, the proposal put forth by the government yesterday was rejected. A full repeal of three laws and enacting legislation for remunerative MSP for all farmers were reiterated as the pending demands of the movement,” Samyukt Kisan Morcha said after discussing the Centre’s proposal.
For the first time in the month-long stand-off between farmers and the Centre, the latter proposed to keep the laws on hold for the time being. The time could be utilised to further the talks between the Centre and farmers until a common ground is reached. Tomar had expressed hope and said a solution was possible on January 22, the 11th round of meeting between the two parties.
During the meeting on Wednesday with the ministers, several union leaders objected to the proposal saying postponing the implementation of the laws would bring no solution. What they want was a complete withdrawal of all the three laws. The leaders, however, said the final decision on Centre’s proposal would be taken only after discussing it in details.
The unions held their discussion on Thursday and said they would not be accepting the Centre’s proposal and would communicate their decision at Friday’s meeting taking the situation back to ground zero and throwing the ball back to the government’s court to decide its further course of action to address the farmers’ issues.
(Manas Dasgupta)