Amit Shah holds meeting with ministers, BJP officials on farmers' issue

Home Minister and senior BJP leader Amit Shah on Thursday held a meeting with Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal and Narendra Singh Tomar to discuss the ongoing farmers' agitation.

The meeting was held at the BJP head office here and was also attended by the party's general secretaries CT Ravi, Dushyant Gautam and Arun Singh among others. It lasted for more than an hour.

According to sources, during the meeting Shah reviewed the BJP's outreach programme through press conferences and ‘chaupals' or open meetings across all districts of the country to allay fears on the new farm laws. Since the large-scale farmers' agitation began a few weeks ago, the BJP has been organising press conferences and 'chaupals' in all the districts of the country on the new agriculture-related bills passed recently by the Central government.

The party has planned to hold 700 press conferences and 700 'chaupals' in the coming days.Shah has been holding meetings with Union Ministers on the protest issue and has also met farmers' leaders. The meeting was held on the day the Supreme Court heard a plea related to the farmers' protests against the Centre's three new agriculture laws.

The apex court on Thursday acknowledged the right of farmers to non-violent protests and suggested that the Centre put on hold the implementation of the three contentious agri laws as it was thinking of setting up an "impartial and independent" panel of agriculture experts and farmer unions to resolve the impasse.