SKM Plans March to Panjab Assembly On Budget Day

With the Panjab government set to present its 2025–26 Budget on 26 Mar, the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) has declared plans to march to the state Assembly on the same day. At a meeting on 16 Mar, SKM said protesters would gather in Sector 34, Chandigarh before proceeding to the Assembly. According to SKM, the march is to negate Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann’s false narrative that their demands are from the union govt., not the state. Farmers point out that the state govt. had even agreed to some of these demands in December 2023 but has not implemented them. Meanwhile, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-led govt. faces mounting criticism for blocking the 5 Mar farmers’ rally and detaining scores of farmer leaders preemptively before the rally. CM Mann’s current stance is ironic because AAP itself is a party born out of protests and AAP supported the Farmers Protest 1.0 in 2020-21. In fact, that protest and people’s will to uproot the traditional parties—Shiromani Akali Dal and Indian National Congress—had brought AAP to power in Panjab. CM Mann seems to be under pressure from urban areas which have now started opposing farmers because they claim protests hamper their business. Meanwhile, farmer unions Samyukt Kisan Morcha (Non-Political) and Kisan Mukti Morcha—who are on sit-ins on Panjab and Haryana interstate borders Khanauri and Shambhu—have readied a plan on the implementation of Minimum Support Price referencing parliamentary recommendations and an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report on how Indian farmers are indirectly taxed. Talks are set to take place on 19 Mar between farmer representatives and a union govt. delegation led by Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who had earlier proposed a five-year procurement plan for pulses, maize, and cotton (earlier coverage).