Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha on Wednesday continued his protest in support of the demands raised by farmers in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region even as he spoke to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis about the matter, PTI reported.

The former Union minister was detained on Monday evening while protesting outside the Akola district collector’s office against the BJP government’s alleged apathy towards farmers in the state’s Vidarbha region. Although they were released later in the evening, Sinha said he “will not budge” till their demands were met. They were demanding better prices for crops and for cases to be filed against a few Bt cotton companies.

After Sinha spoke to Fadnavis, the chief minister had reportedly assured the leader of fulfilling the demands.

The district administration has claimed that most demands, including providing compensation to cotton farmers and action against companies manufacturing “bogus” bio-technologically modified seeds, have been met.

The farmers are also demanding that banks execute loan waivers by personally visiting gram panchayats, uninterrupted power supply to agricultural pump sets, and want “unjust” conditions to be removed from the gold mortgage waiver scheme of the government for farmers. They have also demanded that all farm produce should be purchased at the minimum support price by the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India.

“Except for the [demand related to purchase of farm produce], which is a call to be taken by the Central government, we have accepted all demands and have requested the protesters led by Sinha to call off their stir,” Collector Astik Kumar Pandey had said on Tuesday.

Sinha said that the statement was only an “excuse” as Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states like Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat have been procuring farm produce through their own systems.

Various politicians like Nationalist Congress Party’s Sharad Pawar, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee have expressed their support in favour of Sinha.

The veteran politician has been at loggerheads with the BJP ever since he wrote an article in September attacking the government for the economic slowdown.