In a blow to farmers protesting against the three contentious agri laws, two unions withdrew their support from the agitation at the borders of Delhi. The announcement came a day after violence broke out in the national capital during the tractor parade on Republic Day.

Talking to reporters, Bharatiya Kisan Union (Bhanu) president Thakur Bhanu Pratap Singh said he was deeply pained by whatever happened during the tractor parade in the national capital, adding that his union was ending its protest.

The union was staging the protest at the Chilla border.

VM Singh of All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee said that it is withdrawing from the ongoing agitation as they cannot carry forward a protest with someone “whose direction is something else”.

The tractor parade on Tuesday that was to highlight the demands of the farmer unions to repeal three new agri laws dissolved into anarchy on the streets of the city as tens of thousands of protesters broke through barriers, fought with police, overturned vehicles and hoisted a religious flag on the ramparts of the iconic Red Fort.

The Kisan Samyukta Morcha, an umbrella body representing 41 farmers’ unions, had distanced themselves from the “antisocial elements” that caused violence in their otherwise peaceful movement.

On Wednesday, it alleged that “antisocial” elements, like actor Deep Sidhu, attempted to "torpedo" their peaceful agitation as per a “conspiracy”, but asserted they would not allow “the government and other forces inimical to the peaceful movement to break this struggle”.

In a statement, the morcha said, “The Union government has been severely shaken by this peasant agitation. Therefore, a dirty conspiracy was hatched with Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee and others against the peaceful struggle of other farmer organisations, who had set up their own separate protest site after 15 days of beginning of this farmers' agitation. They were not part of the organisations which jointly undertook the struggle.”