CHANDIGARH, 17 Feb: Farmer leader Sarwan Singh Pandher on Saturday demanded that the Centre should bring an ordinance on giving a legal guarantee to minimum support price (MSP), a key demand of the farmers currently camping at Shambhu and Khanauri points of the Punjab-Haryana border.
The demand comes a day before the fourth round of talks between farm leaders and union ministers over their various demands.
“If it (Centre) brings out an ordinance, it can bring it overnight, if it wants to. If the government wants a resolution of the farmers’ protest, then it should bring an ordinance with immediate effect that it will enact a law on MSP, then discussions can proceed further,” Pandher told reporters at the Shambhu border.
As far as the modalities are concerned, Pandher said that any ordinance has a six-month validity.
On the issue of farm debt waiver, Pandher said that the government is saying that the loan amount has to be assessed. The government can collect data from banks in this regard, he said, adding, “It is a question of willpower.”
Union ministers Arjun Munda, Piyush Goyal and Nityanand Rai and farmer leaders will meet on Sunday for the fourth round of talks. The two sides met earlier on 8, 12 and 15 February, but those talks remained inconclusive. On the fifth day of their ‘Delhi Chalo’ march – called by the Samyukta Kisan Morcha and the Kisan Mazdoor Morcha – the farmers stayed put at the two border points of Punjab and Haryana as they press the Centre to accept their demands, including a legal guarantee of an MSP for crops.
Besides a legal guarantee for MSP, the farmers are demanding implementation of the Swaminathan Commission’s recommendations; pension for farmers and farm labourers; farm debt waiver; no hike in electricity tariff; withdrawal of police cases; “justice” for the victims of the 2021 Lakhimpur Kheri violence; reinstatement of the Land Acquisition Act, 2013; and compensation to the families of the farmers who died during a previous agitation in 2020-’21. (PTI)