Farmers from Punjab marched toward Chandigarh on Friday, May 15 to meet Gulab Chand Kataria and submit a memorandum highlighting their demands related to agriculture, electricity, water sharing and farmers’ rights and a large number of farmers gathered at YPS Chowk in Mohali before beginning their planned march toward Chandigarh.
Anticipating the protest police had already made heavy security arrangements in the area and barricades were placed on main roads leading toward Chandigarh especially on the route connecting Sector-50 and the area around Governor’s residence.
As the farmers tried to move ahead through Sector-50 route tension increased between protesters and police and according to reports from the spot some farmers used iron chains attached to tractors to pull down and remove the barricades placed by the police and later they attempted to continue their march toward Chandigarh.
To stop protesters from moving forward police used water cannons and fired tear gas shells and the situation remained tense for some time as both sides faced each other on the road however no major injuries were immediately reported during confrontation.
Later senior police officials held discussions with the protesting farmers to calm the situation and after the meeting an official from Punjab State Bhawan arrived at the protest site and accepted the farmers’ memorandum of demands and the protesting farmers raised several key issues during the march out of which one of their major demands was that river water distribution should be based on the Riparian Principle and they also demanded removal of certain provisions of Punjab Reorganization Act.
Apart from this farmers protested against Centre’s proposed Electricity Amendment Bill 2025 and Seed Act 2025 and said these laws could negatively affect farmers and agriculture in future along with this the farmers also repeated their long-standing demand for a legal guarantee on Minimum Support Price (MSP) for all crops and in addition they demanded restoration of cancelled cooperative credit limits and sought uninterrupted electricity supply and full canal water availability during paddy season.
