Union home minister Amit Shah made an attempt at resolving the standoff with the farmers on Tuesday evening but it made little headway with both sides sticking to their guns.

This led to Wednesday's scheduled meeting between the protesting farmer unions and the government interlocutors being postponed.

During the more than three hours of discussions, Shah offered to consider more amendments to the contentious new farm laws but the farmers said that nothing short of repeal would do.

The government, however, bought some time for itself by promising to send the amendments it is willing to make in writing to the farmers by Wednesday morning.

These, according to Hannan Mollah of the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), will be placed before all the farmer organisations for consideration because the delegation that met Shah on Tuesday was only representative.

Agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar and food minister Piyush Goyal attended the meeting. According to those present, Tomar again listed the amendments the government was prepared to accept and was reminded by the farmers that they had heard all this several times before.

Shah then stepped in to say the government was willing to consider more amendments. When the farmers insisted on repeal, he urged them not to be adamant.

Shah’s shot at finding a way out of the impasse came soon after the Bharat Bandh witnessed a peasant-worker mobilisation across the country.

The bandh remained peaceful across the country, with the states governed by parties that had supported the programme witnessing more success. In Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, the BJP governments went in for preventive detentions to stop union leaders from mobilising people to participate in the bandh.

The olive branch was extended late in the afternoon, with the Union home minister’s office inviting the Punjab farmer unions to a meeting at Shah's residence in the evening. They were asked to send a delegation of 13.

Soon after, farmer leaders told reporters at the Singhu border that their representatives would be going to the meeting. But they remained unrelenting on their main demands for repeal of the new farm laws and the enactment of a law guaranteeing a minimum support price.

“We will go to the meeting but there is no going back on our demands,” Bhog Singh Mansa said.

Rashtriya Kisan Mahasangh (RKM) leader Shiv Kumar Sharma “Kakaji” said the farmers’ unions had no option but to stay the course — an indication that the groundswell of opinion against the three new laws had left the leaders with little room to negotiate.

Mansa and “Kakaji” were among the 13 who met Shah.

The meeting got delayed because the farmer leaders got caught in rush-hour traffic, made worse by the police barricading for the Bharat Bandh.

In the middle of the journey, the farmer leaders were informed of a change in venue — the meeting was now to be held on the Indian Council for Agricultural Research compound in Pusa on the edge of Lutyens Delhi.

There was some disgruntlement among the Punjab farmers over the selection of representatives for the meeting, in particular the exclusion of Joginder Singh Ugrahan who heads the Bharatiya Kisan Union Ekta-Ugrahan, one of the largest unions in the state.

In a statement, Ugrahan said: “These organisations should not have gone to meet him separately because it creates misunderstanding among struggling people.”

Ugrahan said Shah had approached his organisation twice in the past for separate talks but it had refused, insisting that all the organisations be invited jointly.

All India Kisan Sabha president Ashok Dhawale, however, clarified that the 13 union leaders attending the meeting would not be giving any undertaking to the government.

“Since the home minister had invited us for talks, we thought it best to keep the conversation going despite the short notice,” Dhawale said.

“That he had called today soon after the Bharat Bandh is testimony to the success of the bandh. Our future course will be decided by all the unions together.”

Dhawale said the Punjab unions had decided among themselves who to send to the meeting. The remaining four — “Kakaji”, Mollah, Gurnam Singh Chaduni and Rakesh Tikait — represent their respective collectives: RKM, AIKSCC, BKU (Haryana) and BKU (Uttar Pradesh).