Congress delegation calls on President Kovind over farmers' issue

The Congress delegation comprised parliamentarians Rahul Gandhi, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and Ghulam Nabi Azad.

Earlier a march by the Congress MPs, senior leaders to the Rashtrapati Bhavan was stopped.

A few of the Congress leaders including Rahul's politician sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were detained.

Slamming the central government, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Rahul told reporters, "The PM is making money for the crony capitalists. Whoever will stand against him will be called a terrorist, be it farmers, labourers or Mohan Bhagwat (RSS chief)."

Rahul, the Congress Lok Sabha MP from Kerala's Wayanad, also said there was no democracy in the country.

"The government will have to take responsibility. A government can't run for five, six, seven years by holding the Opposition responsible. It is the government's responsibility to listen to the farmers," said Priyanka.

Thousands of farmers are camped in Delhi-Haryana border or Singhu border since Nov 26 protesting against the three new farm laws, which are dubbed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government as a revolution in the agricultural sector.

One of the Centre's new farm laws will now allow farmers to sell their produce to institutional buyers beyond the regulated wholesale market. 

Though the middlemen in the wholesale markets are often accused of usurping the farmers in the earlier agricultural system, the protesters, backed by several opposition parties, fear they will have little bargaining power while selling their produce to institutional buyers, running the risk of getting exploited with the gradual destabilising of the mundies.   

Though the government held several rounds of talks with the farmers' representatives but gave no breakthrough as the protesters have cleared they would accept nothing short of the repeal of the laws.