Farmers' Protest: Farmer unions to hold fresh talks offer with government today

New Delhi, Dec 26: Protesting farmer unions will on Saturday hold another meeting, where a formal decision on the Centre's invite for the resumption of stalled talks is likely to be taken. On Friday, the farm unions had discussed the government's latest letter inviting them for talks, with some of them indicating that they may decide to resume their dialogue with the Centre to find a solution to the ongoing deadlock over the three contentious agri laws.

One of the protesting union leaders said their demand for a legal guarantee on minimum support price will, however, remain the same.

"We have another meeting tomorrow to take a decision on the Centre's letter. In this meeting, we may decide to resume talks with the government as it appears through its previous letters that it has not been able to understand our issues so far," the leader said.

The farmer union leader said the government's letters have no proposals, the reason why farmer unions may decide to hold fresh talks and make it understand their demands.

"MSP cannot be separated from our demand of repealing these three laws. In these laws, there is mention about private mandis. Who will ensure that our crop is sold at fixed MSP if it is not there?" another leader asked.

On Friday, several farmer unions held a meeting, but no decision could be taken on the Centre's latest letter.

On Thursday, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare Vivek Aggarwal wrote to the protesting unions and invited them for fresh talks, but made it clear that it would not be "logical" to include in the agenda any new demand related to the MSP, which is out of the purview of the three new farm laws.