Farmers’ protests: PM Narendra Modi to virtually address farmers’ conference in Madhya Pradesh today

Prime Minister Narendra Modi (File image: Twitter/@BJP4India)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address farmers as part of the Kisan Kalyan Sammelan in Madhya Pradesh on December 18. The virtual address will be telecast live across all district headquarters of Madhya Pradesh and 23,000 villages of the country, reports suggest.

The address comes at a time when thousands of farmers, especially from Punjab and Haryana, are staging a sit-in protest at various borders of Delhi. The protest started on November 26. The farmers are demanding a complete rollback of the new farm reform laws and a guarantee on the Minimum Support Price (MSP) system being retained.

Multiple rounds of talks between the Centre and the farmers’ union leaders have ended in a stalemate. Protesting farmers fear that the new laws will dismantle the MSP system and corporatise farming.

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The prime minister’s address also comes just a day after hundreds of farmers from Madhya Pradesh started a foot march from Morena – the Lok Sabha constituency of Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar.

The group of farmers, under the ‘Ekta Parishad’ banner, are marching in support of the farmers’ protest in Delhi.

On December 17, Tomar issued a letter to protesting farmers saying it was his duty to “dispel farmers’ misconceptions”.

“As the agriculture minister of the country, my duty is to dispel farmers’ misconceptions, to make every farmer of this country tension-free. It is my duty to expose the conspiracy being hatched to create a wall between the farmers and the Centre,” Tomar wrote in Hindi.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is expected to join the event from Raisen. The state government will initiate transfer of Rs 1,600 crore to bank accounts of 35 lakh farmers as relief funds against crop loss.