Create awareness among farmers to take up paddy sowing for rabi season in Oct: Jagadish Reddy asks ZPTCs, MPPs

Jagadish Reddy said that paddy procurement of yasangi crop season would be completed by March, if the timing of sowing for the crop season was advanced

Nalgonda: Energy Minister G Jagadish Reddy on Saturday asked the local bodies’ elected representatives to help implement the government decision to advance sowing of the rabi (yasangi) crop season to October to protect crops from unseasonal rains and hailstorms.

Speaking at Zilla Parishad general body meeting at Nalgonda, Jagadish Reddy said that paddy procurement of yasangi crop season would be completed by March, if the timing of sowing for the crop season was advanced. Rabi crop season will start in November and end in May. In earlier years also, paddy was damaged due to unseasonal rains in May. Hence, advancing the sowing for the rabi season would complete the harvest in mid-March. The elected representatives of local bodies and officials should create awareness among the farmers to take up paddy sowing for the rabi season in October. To achieve this, sowing of Kharif too needs to start in June and harvest completed before October, he added.

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When several ZPTCs and MPPs raised media reports on alleged irregularities in the paddy procurement, he said that most of the media houses were working with a political agenda. The members should present the proofs rather than citing news reports. He said that the state government purchased every grain of paddy produced by the farmers in the State. The Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao instructed the officials for the procurement the paddy, which was damaged due to unseasonal rains.

The general body meeting also adopted a resolution supporting the decision of the state government to advance the timing of crop seasons.

Rajya Sabha member Badugula Lingaiah Yadav, Zilla Parishad Chairman Banda Narender Reddy, district Collector T Vinay Krishna Reddy, MLAs Kancherla Bhupal Reddy, Ramavath Ravindra Kumar Naik and others also attended the general body meeting.