Farmer leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal ends hunger strike
Farmer leader Jagjit Singh Dallewal, who was on a hunger strike since November 26, accepted water and broke his fast on Friday morning, the Punjab government told the Supreme Court.
“Mr Dallewal accepted water today and broke fast,” Advocate General Gurminder Singh, representing the Punjab government, told a bench of Justices Surya Kant and NK Singh on Friday.
Dallewal, chief of the farm group Samyukta Kisan Morcha (Non-Political), was on a hunger strike at Khanauri, located on the Punjab-Haryana border.
The hunger strike was part of a wider campaign by Punjab’s farm groups to press the Union government to accept their demand for legally guaranteed minimum support prices.
Farmers, under the banners of SKM and Kisan Mazdoor Morcha, have been camping at the Shambhu and Khanauri border points between Punjab and Haryana since February 13 last year, after their march to Delhi was stopped by security forces.
The court asked the Punjab and Haryana governments to file a status report on the ground situation and directed a high-powered committee formed by it to file its supplementary report. Headed by retired High Court judge Nawab Singh, the committee was set up in September to resolve the grievances of the protesting farmers.
