Telangana: BJP tries to mislead people on paddy auction

With the Food Corporation of India (FCI) refusing to procure paddy that was soaked in rains, Telangana government had procured the paddy to help farmers

Hyderabad: Even as the State government was making efforts to rescue farmers by auctioning paddy in the open market, the BJP is trying to politicize the issue by creating an impression that this was being done to benefit the ruling party.

With the Food Corporation of India (FCI) refusing to procure paddy that was soaked in rains, the State government had procured the paddy to help farmers. With the FCI also restricting its purchases, the State was left with over 1.10 crore metric tonnes of paddy procured by the State Civil Supplies Corporation during the last two seasons. Hence, to make space for the Vanakalam paddy stock, the State government decided to go for an auction and called for global tenders.

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However, the BJP in order to shift the blame from the Centre for the plight of the farmers, is now trying to mislead the people by claiming that the procured paddy was being auctioned to get kickbacks from millers. “The auction is being done to earn kickbacks of around Rs.4,000 crore,” Nizamabad MP Arvind Dharmapuri alleged.

The State government framed auction guidelines in such a manner that rice millers of the State cannot take part and the paddy could be sold to rich millers of Andhra Pradesh, he alleged, obviously choosing not to speak that the State government had invited global tenders for auction of 25 lakh metric tonnes of paddy.

In fact, the State had requested the Centre for scaling up rice procurement from the 44 lakh metric tonnes lifted in the last Vanakalam marketing season 2022-23, to 67 lakh metric tonnes this time in view of the substantial increase in production of paddy. However, the Centre agreed to hike the procurement quantity by only 13.6 per cent for the year.