Amid a tense stand-off between the government and farmers, the Samyukt Kisan Morcha – an umbrella organisation of farmer unions not directly linked to those leading this round of protests – has rejected a five-year contract to buy three types of pulses, maize, and cotton at the old MSP.

The SKM on Monday evening criticised the proposal as “diverting and the focal demands of farmers”, and insisted on nothing less than the purchase of “all crops (23, including the above five) with guaranteed procurement (as) promised in the BJP manifesto (before the) 2014 general election”.

This procurement, the SKM stressed should be based on the C2+50 per cent MSP, or minimum support price, formula of the Swaminathan Commission and not the existing A2+FL+50 per cent method.

NDTV Explains | Centre’s 5-Year MSP Plan, And Why Farmers Are Not Convinced

The SKM also criticised the government – led in this instance by three union ministers, including Agriculture Minister Arjun Munda – for a lack of transparency through the four rounds of talks so far.

And finally, the SKM has also demanded the government make progress on other demands, which include loan waivers, no hike in electricity tariffs, and the withdrawal of police cases filed during the 2020/21 protests, when protesting farmers had violent clashes with security personnel.

There has also been no progress, the SKM said, on demands like a comprehensive public sector crop insurance scheme and a monthly pension of Rs 10,000 to farmers over the age of 60.

READ | What Are Key Demands Of Farmers That Remain Unresolved?

A demand to prosecute junior Home Minister Ajay Mishra Teni in connection with the deaths of farmers in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri – has also not been resolved.

The Samyukt Kisan Morcha is not the farmer body at the head of these protests, which are led by a non-political offshoot with the same name. Nevertheless, as a large federation of farmer unions, it can influence those farmers who participated in Sunday’s meeting with the government.

In the overall narrative of the farmers’ protests, this is crucial because those now at Shambhu on the Punjab and Haryana border – and speaking to the government – are seeking additional support, and getting the SKM on-board will add a good deal of muscle in attempts to bargain with the authorities.

Representatives of farmers leading this protest and the government met in Chandigarh Sunday evening for a fourth round of talks, from which the five-year, C2 + 50 per cent contract emerged.

The farmers asked for, and were given, 48 hours to decide on the offer, but the signs so far are not encouraging, with some telling NDTV the proposal has “no benefit to Punjab, Haryana farmers…”

At the heart of the farmers’ protest – ‘Delhi Chalo 2.0’ – is the MSP issue.

MSPs, minimum support prices, have no legal backing, meaning the government is not obliged to buy, for example, 10 per cent of a farmer’s paddy crop at the floor price.

It is this that the farmers want changed.

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The borders around Delhi are likely to witness a showdown again from Wednesday as protesting farmers have rejected the government’s five-year contract to buy three types of pulses, maize, and cotton at the old minimum support price. 

The announcement by the protesting farmers came hours after the Samyukt Kisan Morcha, an umbrella organisation of farmer unions which is not part of the current protests, also criticised the MSP proposal. 

Pakistani politicians loyal to jailed former prime minister Imran Khan will forge an alliance with a little-known political group, his party said Monday, after polls marred by allegations of manipulation returned no clear winner.

Candidates backed by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party won the most seats in this month’s election but were effectively sidelined because they were forced to stand as independents.

The army-backed Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) failed to secure a ruling majority but has forged a partnership with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and a handful of smaller parties to form the next government.

However, PTI still hopes to seek a majority by having its candidates join the Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC), a registered political party whose chairman was the only one from the alliance of Islamic political and religious parties group to win a seat.

“We have reached a consensus that our provincial and national assembly candidates will join Sunni Ittehad Council,” PTI chairman Gohar Ali Khan told a news conference.

Successful PTI-backed candidates will send their applications to join the SIC this week to the Election Commission of Pakistan, which must approve the alliance.

If the commission signs off on them, the alliance could then be entitled to seats reserved for women and religious minorities that are allocated according to election results.

“After this alliance, PTI will be in a position to form a government in the provinces as well as in the centre,” Omar Ayub Khan, PTI’s candidate for prime minister, told the news conference, referring to the National Assembly.

There have been widespread allegations of vote-rigging and result manipulation after authorities switched off Pakistan’s mobile phone network on election day and the count took more than 24 hours.

A senior bureaucrat announced at a news conference on Saturday that he had helped rig the February 8 election and would hand himself in to police.

“We converted the losers into winners, reversing margins of 70,000 votes in 13 national assembly seats,” said Liaqat Ali Chattha, commissioner of the garrison city of Rawalpindi where the powerful military has its headquarters.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a leading advocacy group, said after Chattha’s announcement that the “involvement of the state bureaucracy in rigging in Pakistan is beginning to be exposed”.

Imran Khan’s PTI held nationwide protests against the alleged rigging on Saturday.

A small number of supporters took to the streets in major urban centres, with the largest gathering of around 4,000 people in its stronghold northern city of Peshawar.

Police detained senior party member Salman Akram Raja and around a dozen supporters in the central city of Lahore, where they surrounded the party headquarters, but said they had all been released by late afternoon.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)