Agri bill: Farmer plan to intensify protests | Economic Times

New Delhi: Farmers organisations have decided to intensify protests against the three central bills meant to reform the farm sector. The All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee, an umbrella of 250 farmers’ organisations, has called for a nation-wide strike next Friday. In Haryana, over 12 organisations have threatened to block national highways in 26 districts on Sunday, when the bill will be taken up in the Rajya Sabha. In Punjab the farmers’ organisations plan a bandh next Friday. A one-day strike will be observed by commission agents and APMC agents in Rajasthan on Monday. Kisan Sangharsh Union chief Mathu Singh Pannu said farmers across the country “will speak in one voice against the ordinances.”Prabhakar Kelkar, vice president of the BJP-allied Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, said the farmers’ discontent is over uncertainty of payments, as per the new bills. The union, however, is unlikely to join the protests led by other organisations but will ‘pursue a dialogue with the Centre and BJP’, he said. “We have been in talks with the government on not doing away with minimum support prices. They have agreed with it but more assurances are needed,” he told ET.