Farmers will stage sit-in protests in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Uttarakhand on February 21 to press the Centre to accept their 21-point demand charter, said Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Rakesh Tikait on Saturday, reported PTI.

Tikait told media persons after attending a panchayat at Sisauli in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar that a resolution had also been passed to ask the Samyukta Kisan Morcha to organise a tractor march to Delhi in the last week of February.

The panchayat was held as the “Delhi Chalo” march called by the Kisan Mazdoor Morcha and the Sanyukta Kisan Morcha (Non-Political) – two umbrella bodies of around 200 farmers’ and farm labourer unions — entered its fifth day on Saturday with protests by thousands of farmers at the Punjab-Haryana border at Shambhu.

The primary demand of the farmers is a law guaranteeing a minimum support price for agricultural commodities.

A minimum support price is the rate at which the government buys farm produce and is based on a calculation of at least one and a half times the cost of production incurred by the farmers.

Other demands in their charter include the implementation of the MS Swaminathan Commission’s wider recommendations, pensions for farmers and farm labourers, farm debt waiver, reinstatement of the Land Acquisition Act, 2013, withdrawal from the World Trade Organization and compensation for families of farmers who died during the previous farmers’ protests between 2020 and 2021.

They are also demanding the withdrawal of police cases relating to the 2021 Lakhimpur Kheri violence.

On Saturday, the Samyukta Kisan Morcha also said that it will intensify protests in the coming days, reported The Indian Express. The farmers’ body and central trade unions had called for a nationwide “grameen Bharat Bandh”, or an industrial and rural strike, on Friday as the third round of negotiations with the Centre on Thursday remained inconclusive.

A fourth round of negotiations between leaders of the farmers’ groups and Union ministers will be held on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the Gurnam Singh Charuni-led Bhartiya Kisan Union faction on Saturday organised tractor marches at several locations in Haryana, PTI reported.

The Bhartiya Kisan Union (Ekta Ugrahan) in Punjab held sit-in protests outside the residences of former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh and BJP leaders Sunil Jakhar and Kewal Singh Dhillon.