NEW DELHI: The three-hour national wide road blockade protest or 'chakka jam' called by the Samyukta Kisan Morcha led farmer unions on Saturday although remained largely peaceful, it failed to evoke a major impact and the agitation was restricted to Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and parts of Karnataka.

During the ‘Chakka Jam’, which was organized between 12 pm to 3 pm, farmers parked their tractors-trolleys in the middle of highways at several places in Punjab and Haryana to block roads and farmer leaders addressed public meetings and shouted slogans against the three contentious farm laws passed by the government in recent past.

The major blockade around Delhi was seen at protest sites at Palwal on the Delhi-Agra Highway, Delhi-Jaipur and Delhi-Ambala highways while farmers blocked traffic at hundreds of toll plazas in Haryana. In Punjab protests were seen in all major cities like Bathinda, Patiala, Faridkot, Ferozepur, Moga and other places.

Addressing a major gathering of protesting farms at Ghazipur on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border, Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Rakesh Tikait, who is now at the centre of the moment said that they were not leaving unless their demands of repealing the laws and brining in a guaranteed minimum support price mechanism were met by the government.

Tikait also said the farmers were prepared to sit in protest for a long time he said as of now the protest would extend till October 2 and that the centre had till that date to repeal the laws, failing which the farmer groups agitating against the laws would plan further protests. "We won’t return home unless our demands are met," he repeated as the crowds shouting joined him in chorus.

Before he began his address to the farmers, Tikait planted flowers at the site where the police had placed a strip of metal nails to stop the farmers from crossing it and entering Delhi. "If they plant nails, we will grow flowers," Tikati said.

In the backdrop of fears of a repeat of Republic Day type of chaos and violence, the state governments had stepped up deployment of security forces estimated at over 50,000 in several parts of the capital, and about 60 people were detained at a solidarity protest site within the city of Delhi.

In Karnataka, hundreds of farmers blocked National Highways leading to major traffic snarls prompting the police to detain them into preventive custody. Karnataka based Union Minister for Chemical and Fertilisers D V Sadananda Gowda condemned the protests, saying the Narendra Modi government had passed the laws in the best interest of the farmer and they were being misled by the opposition.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers are protesting at various entry points to Delhi since November against the contentious farm laws saying that they are against the interest of the farmers and are designed to allow corporates to exploit them.

The farmer union leaders have had several rounds of talks with the team lead by Agriculture Minister Narendra Tomar however all of them have failed as the centre has made it clear it will not scrap the laws, instead it has, an 18-month stay on it.