The Samyukta Kisan Morcha on Wednesday took moral responsibility for the chaos during the Republic Day tractor rally and said January 30 — the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s martyrdom — would be observed as a day of penance with a daylong fast.

The Morcha, under whose banner almost 500 farmer organisations have gathered, called off its planned march to Parliament on February 1 but said the agitation for repeal of the three farm laws and the enactment of a legal guarantee for a minimum support price would continue, however long it took.

“The call for the tractor rally was given by us, so we have taken moral responsibility,” Shiv Kumar Sharma Kakkaji of the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Mahasangh said at a late evening news conference of the Morcha.

“We erred in not singling out those who had infiltrated our movement, and we are taking ownership of our mistake.’’

While accepting moral responsibility and offering regret, the Morcha leaders accused the Modi-Shah duopoly of orchestrating the violence through their agents to torpedo a movement that had gone national.

On Republic Day, a tractor rally was held in Bangalore; protesting farmers hoisted the Tricolour at Azad Maidan in Mumbai; and Hyderabad saw a huge rally against the farm laws.

The leaders acknowledged that the scenes of violence in the national capital had eroded support for the movement, but veteran farmer union leader Balbir Singh Rajewal said the Kisan Parade was historic and that 99.9 per cent of those who participated in it had remained peaceful.

“Still, it became a victim of a government conspiracy to break the movement after several earlier attempts to discredit it and weaken it had failed,” Rajewal said, alleging the police themselves had directed the farmers towards central Delhi.

The farmer leaders held actor Deep Sidhu, whom they described as an agent of the Modi-Shah duopoly, and the Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee (KMSC), a group that refused to stick to the designated parade route, responsible for the violence.

About Deep Sidhu, who did a Facebook Live from Red Fort as the Nishan Sahib was hoisted, Rajewal said: “He was planted by Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. There is enough evidence of his association.”

Sidhu, who has from the start been persona non grata for the Morcha, was BJP MP Sunny Deol’s campaign manager in the 2019 polls. Deol has since distanced himself from Sidhu.

The Morcha leaders asked why the police did not act when the KMSC publicly announced on Monday that it would not abide by the agreed parade route. The KMSC was neither among the 32 Punjab unions agitating at the Singhu and Tikri borders nor a member of the Morcha, they underlined.

Accusing the KMSC of acting as an agent of the state, the Morcha underlined that it had arrived at the Singhu border 13 days after others but was allowed to sit right in front on the Delhi side of the barricade, where the police are posted, while the rest of the protesting unions were behind the barriers.

“Why this special treatment for the KMSC?” a farmer leader asked, adding that senior police officers visited the KMSC regularly.

Among the other questions they had was how the tractors were allowed to proceed to the heart of Delhi and reach the Red Fort on Republic Day, when security is at its highest, and how they were allowed to enter the complex and run riot for four hours.

“It is the police who are squarely responsible for what happened at the Red Fort,” Rakesh Tikait said, asking the protesting farmers not to be disheartened by the turn of events.

Tikait, who is from Uttar Pradesh, and Kakkaji, who is from Madhya Pradesh, smelt a government conspiracy to defame the farmers from Punjab.

Countering allegations that the farmers had disrespected the national flag, the Morcha leadership underlined that practically every tractor had a Tricolour flying high.

Even at the Red Fort, where the Tricolour had been hoisted for the first time by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1947, the protesters had not touched the national flag, Kakkaji stressed.

Yogendra Yadav said the Sangh ecosystem had not much of a leg to stand on in the matter of honouring the Tricolour, considering the national flag was not hoisted at the RSS headquarters till 2002.

Amid questions about the Morcha leadership’s ability to control a movement that is growing and inspired rallies across the country on Tuesday, several union leaders said it was this very leadership that had saved the day by deciding to stop the tractors from leaving the borders when word reached them about the breach at Red Fort.

“The SKM leadership intervened effectively in a timely manner to resist a small section which was trying to force tractors to deviate from the designated route towards the Red Fort. It stopped movement of tractors from Singhu Border at 2pm itself and also called off the parade at 6pm,” the All India Kisan Sabha, a member of the Morcha, said in a separate statement.

“This effectively isolated the group that played into the hands of the government.... The events point clearly to the complicity of the BJP government with the disruptive elements.”

The AIKS asked why the police had allowed an alternative route for a small section of farmers when they drew up the route plan in consultation with the Morcha, and why Deep Sidhu had not been arrested yet.

Asked about the possibility of police action against the farmer leaders, many of whom have been named in FIRs, Yogendra Yadav said this was part and parcel of organising protests.