Centre ready to procure paddy: Muralidharan

Hyderabad: In a deliberate and brazen attempt to misguide the farmers of Telangana on a day when Telangana took the battle on paddy procurement to New Delhi, union Parliamentary Affairs Minister V Muralidharan on Monday asserted that Centre was willing to bear the entire paddy procurement cost. This is in sharp contrast to what union […]

Hyderabad: In a deliberate and brazen attempt to misguide the farmers of Telangana on a day when Telangana took the battle on paddy procurement to New Delhi, union Parliamentary Affairs Minister V Muralidharan on Monday asserted that Centre was willing to bear the entire paddy procurement cost.

This is in sharp contrast to what union Food Minister Piyush Goyal stated in Parliament recently that the Centre was not willing to procure paddy from Telangana, and Muralidharan, as Parliamentary Affairs Minister, would certainly be aware of the developments.

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Accusing Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao of enacting drama on the paddy procurement issue, the union Minister, participating in a ‘counter’ dharna here, wondered what was holding back the former from procuding paddy in the State. “The Centre has been procuring paddy all these years and will continue to do so,” he said, and alleged that the reluctance on the part of the State government to procure paddy was being attributed to other factors.

BJP State president Bandi Sanjay Kumar, addressing the gathering, said if the Chief Minister cannot procure paddy from farmers, then he should step down from his post, parroting the words of Chandrashekhar Rao who sought Modi’s resignation if he can’t bring in a uniform food grain procurement policy.

Considering various factors, the Central government increased the Minimum Support Price for the benefit of farmers. “Only Telangana Chief Minister is staging a protest, there is no problem in any other State,” Sanjay said.

He alleged that the TRS government was trying to politicize the paddy procurement issue and was deceiving the farming community. “Power charges, RTC charges and registration charges had gone up and the Chief Minister was staging demonstration only to divert the people’s attention from these issues,” he said.

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