Left parties demand Revanth govt to waive crop loans after farmers hit streets in protest

While the Telangana Rashtra Rythu Sangham, affiliated to CPI, has called for protests in front of the Collector's office today, CPI (M) has decided to stage protests on Thursday.

Hyderabad:  With farmers staging protests over failure of the government in crop loan waiver, left parties and their frontal ogranisations are demanding the Congress government to waive the loans without any conditions and fulfill the promises made to the people.

While the Telangana Rashtra Rythu Sangham, affiliated to CPI, has called for protests in front of the Collector’s office today, CPI (M) has decided to stage protests on Thursday.

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CPI Kothagudem MLA K Sambasiva Rao said the Congress government’s situation in implementing the six guarantees was like taking one step forward and two steps back. CPI is an ally of the Congress government.

After assuring waive crop loans before August 15, the Congress government had waived the loans of 21.66 lakh farmers in three phases with Rs.18,540.24 crore. Due to lack of ration cards, patta pass books and other technical reasons, loans were not waived. Similarly, those, who had secured loans over Rs.2 lakh, were in no mood to consider the announcements being made by the government, he said.

Apart from extending Rythu Bharosa, the Congress government should implement crop insurance, issue ration cards, houses and house sites and increase pensions as promised in the manifesto, he demanded at the party’s meeting in Hanamkonda on Saturday.

Already, half of the kharif season was nearing completion and there was no clarity on Rythu Bharosa or its guidelines, he said, adding “If the situation continues further, there is a possibility of people revolting against the Congress government,”

Similarly, the CPI (M) charged that the Congress government was adopting attention diversion tactics to cover up the crop loan waiver failure. The government had declared that crop loan waiver would be taken up with Rs.31,000 crore but of these Rs.18,000 crore was deposited so far. Loans of over 40 percent farmers were yet to be waived, he said stressing that when CPI (M) leaders visited Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy’s constituency, they were arrested by the police.

Demanding the Congress government not to take unilateral decisions in addressing land issues, the CPI (M) State Secretary Tammineni Veerabhadram demanded the government to call for an all-party meeting.

“To press for our demands to address the farmers’ issues, protests will be staged in front of Revenue offices across the State on Thursday,” Tammineni Veerabhadram said.