Negotiations Continue Between Farmer Unions and Government Amid Demands for MSP Guarantee

Late on Thursday night in Chandigarh, representatives of farmer unions began holding negotiations with the federal government. Meanwhile, farmers who were protesting continued to picket the Punjab-Haryana border in an effort to get a legislation that would guarantee the minimum support price (MSP) for 23 crops.

In addition to a number of other requests, the farmers have asked that Ajay Mishra Teni, whose son is allegedly responsible for killing farmers, be removed from the Union council of ministers.


Due to the late arrival of central ministers Arjun Munda, Piyush Goyal, and Nityanand Rai, the negotiations started more than three hours behind schedule. The union leaders showed up for the meeting on schedule. Deep into the night, Bhagwant Mann, the chief minister of Punjab, was also present at the meeting.

The two parties had negotiations for the third time during this session. The two rounds of discussions that took place on February 8 and 12 ended in a deadlock.

The borders between Haryana and Punjab, at Shambhu and Khanauri, were comparatively quiet on Thursday after two stressful days as farmers awaited the conference, after which a plan of action is anticipated to be determined.

As farmers affiliated with the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Ugrahan) and the Daner faction of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (Dakaunda) squatted on train tracks to protest the use of tear gas on protesting farmers at the Shambhu and Khanauri borders earlier in the week, rail traffic in Punjab was disrupted for a few hours during the day.

In other parts of the state, farmers affiliated with the Samyukta Kisan Morcha, the initial group that led the year-long farmers' protest in 2020–21, temporarily opened toll plazas throughout Punjab in support of the farming community's picketing of the state's borders with Haryana.

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