The Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) Punjab chapter will march towards Chandigarh on March 5 over their pending demands after a two-hour-long meeting with Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann remained inconclusive on Monday.
While farmer leaders claimed that Mann got “provoked” and “walked out of the meeting,” a government functionary said the chief minister appealed to them with “folded hands” to “believe in the power of dialogue instead of holding dharnas and harming Punjab.”
SKM Punjab chief Balbir Singh Rajewal said, “The CM threatened us. Agriculture Minister Gurmeet Singh Khuddian and NRI Affairs Minister Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal were also present. I am saddened that the CM got provoked. There was nothing to justify it—the discussion was happening in a pleasant environment. We had discussed half of the points in our memorandum when he said he had to see a doctor for an eye infection. This behaviour is beneath the dignity of a CM. We are disappointed that someone sitting in the CM’s chair told Punjab’s farmers they could do whatever they wanted. He has challenged the farmers.”
He added, “We had discussed eight points from our memorandum. Suddenly, the CM got up and said he had to see a doctor. There was consensus on one point—that paddy transplantation would be allowed from June 1. But while walking out, he said he would not accept any demands if the morcha continued. We will now hold a week-long protest in Chandigarh. We have met prime ministers and CMs before, but this is the first time I have seen a chief minister getting hyper and walking out. We could not understand why he got so upset.”
The SKM had submitted an 18-point memorandum, including demands for the withdrawal of the National Policy Framework on Agriculture Marketing (NPFAM) and a legal guarantee for the minimum support price (MSP). The farmers have said they will participate in the march after mobilising support from all 23 districts of Punjab.
Bharti Kisan Union (Ugrahan) president Joginder Singh Ugrahan said, “We were holding discussions when the CM told us we should not be staging dharnas. We told him he would not have met us if we had not given the protest call. After this, he got angry. He did not say it in as many words, but he implied that he was not scared of the morcha and had not called the meeting under pressure. Then he walked out. There was consensus on only one demand, and he told us that if the March 5 dharna went ahead, the government would not meet any of our demands. We don’t know what they will do now—the CM is angry. He could get us arrested from our homes or even prevent us from entering Chandigarh. We will see.”
Ugrahan added, “We have met all previous chief ministers, including Parkash Singh Badal, Capt Amarinder Singh, and Charanjit Singh Channi. But this is the first time a CM has lost his temper.”
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A government functionary said the meeting had lasted two hours and was initially cordial. “The CM discussed nine demands with them. Later, he started reading from the last page, and only two were left, which he said were doable. Then he told the leaders he had to see a doctor for his eye infection. He folded his hands and appealed to them to come to the table for discussions rather than staging protests. He told them that farmer dharnas were harming Punjab’s interests. He cited the example of a home delivery portal that had started charging extra for deliveries in Punjab due to the ongoing protests. He also said investors were hesitant to come to Punjab because of these disruptions. Nowhere else in the country are farmers protesting on this scale.”
The official added that when Mann asked whether the farmers would still proceed with their March 5 march, they confirmed they would. “It was clear that they had no intention of calling off their protest. Everyone present felt that they took two hours of the CM’s time, yet the meeting did nothing to prevent the march.”
The unions have not yet been granted a location to protest in Chandigarh. A total of 37 farmer unions, all part of SKM’s Punjab chapter, have called for the Chandigarh Kooch protest. The last major farmer protest in Chandigarh, led by BKU (Ugrahan), took place from September 1 to September 6 in Sector 34. It was the first time in two decades that the Chandigarh administration had allowed a dharna there. The Punjab government had then agreed to release the draft of the state’s agriculture policy, which was later handed over to the farmers.
