After 540 days of protests against the Bidadi Township, Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar on Tuesday finally invited protesting farmers for talks regarding the project.

The move came after farmers, who had been protesting at Bairamangala Circle for over 540 days, brought their protest to Bengaluru’s Freedom Park and announced that they would lay siege to Vidhana Soudha.

Yashavantha T., State general secretary of the Karnataka Prantha Raitha Sangha (KPRS), said the Chief Minister’s Office had invited 25 representatives of the protesting farmers, who are members of Samyukta Horata Karnataka and the Bairamangala-Kanchugaranahalli Horata Samithi.

A delegation including farmer leaders Badagalapura Nagendra, Chukki Nanjundaswamy, Melukote MLA Darshan Puttannaiah, and farmers from nine villages, that are up for acquisition, will meet the Chief Minister at Vidhana Soudha.

The primary demand of the farmers is that the Bidadi Township project be dropped. The farmers also demanded that the land acquisition process, which began after the final notification was issued, be stopped. If the government goes ahead with a survey through a committee, the farmers have demanded that the committee have representation from different fields.