We consider supersymmetric surface defects in compactifications of the 6d minimal (D N +3 , D N +3 ) conformal matter theories on a punctured Riemann surface. For the case of N = 1 such defects are introduced into the supersymmetric index computations by an action of the BC 1 (∼ A 1 ∼ C 1 ) van Diejen model. We (re)derive this fact using three different field theoretic descriptions of the four dimensional models. The three field theoretic descriptions are naturally associated with algebras A N =1 , C N =1 , and (A 1 ) N =1 . The indices of these 4d theories give rise to three different Kernel functions for the BC 1 van Diejen model. We then consider the generalizations with N > 1. The operators introducing defects into the index computations are certain A N , C N , and (A 1 ) N generalizations of the van Diejen model. The three different generalizations are directly related to three different effective gauge theory descriptions one can obtain by compactifying the minimal (D N +3 , D N +3 ) conformal matter theories on a circle to five dimensions. We explicitly compute the operators for the A N case, and derive various properties these operators have to satisfy as a consequence of 4d dualities following from the geometric setup. In some cases we are able to verify these properties which in turn serve as checks of said dualities. As a by-product of our constructions we also discuss a simple Lagrangian description of a theory corresponding to compactification on a sphere with three maximal punctures of the minimal (D 5 , D 5 ) conformal matter and as consequence give explicit Lagrangian constructions of compactifications of this 6d SCFT on arbitrary Riemann surfaces.