Delhi, 16 February: Three union ministers, including Arjun Munda, Piyush Goyal, and Nityanand Rai, started their third round of talks with protesting farmer unions in Chandigarh on Thursday evening.
The meeting, which was held at the Mahatma Gandhi State Institute of Public Administration and also attended by Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, aimed to resolve the ongoing standoff between the farmers and security personnel at two points on the Punjab-Haryana border.
The farmer unions have been demanding a law guaranteeing Minimum Support Price (MSP) for crops, and this will be a major topic of discussion in the meeting. The previous two rounds of dialogue, held on February 8 and 12, were inconclusive. As the meeting took place, farmers continued to camp at the border points and halted their march towards Delhi until the outcome of the talks. In a separate development, farmers also staged protests by squatting on railway tracks in Punjab to show solidarity with the farmers participating in the ‘Delhi Chalo’ march.
The decision was taken in response to the use of tear gas shells and other forceful measures used by Haryana Police against the protesters. The outcome of the meeting between the ministers and farmer leaders will determine the next course of action for both parties involved in this ongoing agricultural issue.
