Farmers to block railways if demands not met
Deccan ChronicleNEW DELHI: Not satisfied with the Centre’s offer to amend new agriculture laws, the farmers’ unions on Thursday said that they won’t relent on their demand of “complete rollback” and threatened to block railway tracks across the country in coming days. If agriculture is a state subject, the Central government does not have the right to make laws on it,” said farmer leader Balbir Singh Rajewal after agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar and food and public distribution minister Piyush Goyal invited farmers’ leaders for another round of talks. The farmer leaders issued fresh threats to block railway tracks just a day after they had outrightly rejected the Centre’s draft proposal to amend the new farm laws. He said that the government was ready to consider with an open mind any provision in the new laws where farmers have any issue and “we want to clarify all their apprehensions.” In its proposal, the Centre had offered significant concessions including a written assurance on continuation of minimum support price -based procurement and ensuring parity in transactions inside and outside existing Agricultural Produce Market Committee mandis.