Farmers in queue becomes regular scene in Telangana

The farmers were seen placing photocopies of the passbooks and Aadhar cards in the queue in front of the PACS in these villages to get 'jeeluga' and 'janumu' green manure seeds.

Jagtial: Farmers being forced to stand in queues in the scorching heat to get seeds is apparently becoming a regular occurence in Telangana. A sight that was never seen in the last nine years, several seed dispensing outlets of the government are now seeing such queues, with the farmers keeping their pattadar passbooks and Aadhar cards in the queue while they take a break after standing for long hours.

If the queue was in front of the Agros Rythu Seva Kendra in Jogipet of Sangareddy last week, it was the turn of farmers in Nukapalli and Potharam of Mallial mandal in Jagtial on Monday to stand in queues in front of Primary Agriculture Cooperatives Societies (PACS) in the district. The farmers were seen placing photocopies of the passbooks and Aadhar cards in the queue in front of the PACS in these villages to get ‘jeeluga’ and ‘janumu’ green manure seeds.

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Since it was a conventional practice to sow such green manure seeds before the beginning of the agriculture season to reduce the usage of fertilizer, several farmers had rushed to the PACS for the seeds. However, agriculture officials gave only one bag of seeds to each farmer citing a shortage of the seeds. It is learnt that out of 600 bags required for Potharam village, only 100 bags were supplied. This was when there were over 300 farmers in the queue. In Nukapalli, 300 bags were supplied as against the 800 required. There were 450 farmers in the queue. Farmers who did not get seed bags had to return empty handed, cursing their luck.

Responding to the issue, former Choppadandi MLA Sunke Ravishankar found fault with the state government for not adequate number of the seeds to farmers within the timeframe. Terming the Congress government as anti-farmer, he said the Congress mark governance had returned to the State in full force. Apart from the drought, farmers were still being made to wait for the promised bonus of Rs.500, while now even green manure seeds were not available as per the requirement, he said.

Farmers, who were disheartened after being forced to return without the seeds, said they had never faced such a situation when the BRS government led by K Chandrashekhar Rao was in power.

Last week, several farmers, who had stood in queues with pattadar passbooks for their turn to collect tokens for buying green manure seeds at the Agros Rythu Seva Kendra at Jogipet in Sangareddy, were told after hours of waiting that the stocks were over. The irate farmers had staged a protest. There too, the issue was the same one, that of the agriculture outlet not getting adequate stocks.