Chandigarh 5 march 2025 : Several farm unions under the banner of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) are heading to Chandigarh on Wednesday to start their indefinite agitation.
The protest will take place wherever they are stopped by security in a Delhi-like protest by farmers, mainly from Punjab, over their long-pending demands.
As a precaution, the Chandigarh Police have sealed all the entry points to the city by deploying heavy security and issued an advisory to commuters to avoid these routes. Bharatiya Kisan Union (Ekta-Ughrahan) President Joginder Singh Ughrahan has appealed to the farmers not to block roads, highways, and railway tracks as it would create public inconvenience.
He advised the farmers to stage sit-in protests at roadsides at the place where security personnel stopped them from moving ahead. However, he appealed to all farmer unions to lodge the protest in a massive way by reaching Chandigarh and joining “Pakka Morcha” in Chandigarh, where the administration has not yet allotted a site for the protest.
Official sources said the farmers would be stopped at the city’s entry point. The SKM has accused the Punjab government of suppressing the right to protest. Besides the implementation of the agriculture policy, the demands of the SKM include the release of land distribution to landless laborers and farmers and debt waiver of farmers and laborers.
Hours after talks between the Punjab government, led by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, and the SKM failed on Monday, raids are being conducted at residences of farmer leaders, including Ugrahan.
Talks to discuss farmers’ demands broke down midway with farmer leaders claiming a “livid” Chief Minister Mann “walked out of the meeting in a huff without a provocation.” After the meeting, the SKM leaders announced they would go ahead with their call for a massive sit-in protest in Chandigarh. Ughrahan said the discussions with the Chief Minister were going on smoothly.
“After discussions on eight or nine out of our 18 demands, CM Mann said he had an infection in his eye for which he needed to go,” he told the media.
“The CM then asked us about our plans for the March 5 protest, to which we replied that the discussions were pending and we will take a call on our plan to protest after that,” said Ughrahan, adding that the CM got upset and left the meeting asking “us to resort to protest.”
Later, Chief Minister Mann said his doors “are always open for talks with the farmers but inconvenience and harassment of the public in the name of agitation should be avoided.” Interacting with farmers at a meeting, the Chief Minister added that the “government is always ready to resolve the issues pertaining to various sections of society through negotiations so that trouble to the common man through railway or road blockades must be avoided.”
The Chief Minister also assured farmers that farm income would be doubled and that his government would implement the M.S. Swaminathan Report whether the Centre did that or not. Farmers were also assured that every crop would be procured by the state on minimum support price (MSP), he added.
Summary: Farmers from Punjab are heading to Chandigarh, planning a protest similar to the Delhi demonstrations, raising concerns over agricultural issues.