TRS hits the road for farmers

Hyderabad: Mounting pressure on the Central government against its paddy procurement policy, the ruling TRS organised State-wide protests in all Assembly constituency headquarters here on Friday. Along with farmers, Ministers, MPs, MLAs, MLCs and other elected representatives participated in the Rythu Maha Dharnas organised in their respective constituencies, demanding the Centre to make a clear […]

Hyderabad: Mounting pressure on the Central government against its paddy procurement policy, the ruling TRS organised State-wide protests in all Assembly constituency headquarters here on Friday. Along with farmers, Ministers, MPs, MLAs, MLCs and other elected representatives participated in the Rythu Maha Dharnas organised in their respective constituencies, demanding the Centre to make a clear announcement to purchase the entire paddy yield from Telangana. They also demanded to stop discrimination between the States in the paddy purchases.

Farmers, along with the TRS cadre, took part in large numbers to express their support for the demand to the Centre to continue procurement of boiled rice produced in the Yasangi (Rabi) season. The protests were staged in front of the Collectorates, revenue divisional offices, Tahsildars’ offices and other places as well as highways and major junctions. The TRS made it clear that their protests were also against new farm laws which have provisions of discontinuing minimum support price, provisions of fixing energy reading meters to agricultural pump-sets and others. They rode bullock carts and protested with paddy saplings as part of the dharna.

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Raising slogans against the Centre and holding placards, nearly three lakh agitators, including TRS cadres and farmers, joined the leaders in the sit-in to protest the Centre’s refusal to lift the entire stock of paddy from the State. The TRS State leadership constantly monitored the arrangements to make the protests a success. The TRS leaders have already obtained necessary permissions for dharnas from respective district Collectors in the wake of the Model Code of Conduct ahead of MLC polls. TRS president and Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao recently called for the protests, to expose the double standards of the BJP on paddy purchases.

TRS working president and Minister KT Rama Rao led the protests organised in Siricilla, while Ministers including T Harish Rao, Puvvada Ajay Kumar, A Indrakaran Reddy, Errabelli Dayakar Rao, Vemula Prashanth Reddy, S Niranjan Reddy, G Jagadish Reddy, P Sabitha Indra Reddy, Satyavathi Rathod, V Srinivas Goud, Koppula Eeshwar and others held protests in their respective constituency headquarters as well as the district headquarters concerned. In Hyderabad, TRS leaders led by Ministers Mohd Mahmood Ali and Talasani Srinivas Yadav staged the protest at Dharna Chowk near Indira Park.

Addressing the Rythu Maha Dharna at Siricilla, KT Rama Rao said before Telangana was formed, farmers stood in long queues for seeds and fertilisers as well as staged protests for adequate power supply for raising crops. But, the TRS government succeeded in providing necessary support to farmers through Rythu Bandhu, Rythu Bima, uninterrupted power supply and irrigation water supply among others, enabling them to take up cultivation with confidence.

“The State government made a small beginning of diverting farmers towards alternative crops by educating them and explaining about the situation. A section of farmers had agreed to go for other crops this Yasangi season, but BJP State leaders are creating confusion among the farmers’ by asking them to cultivate paddy alone, assuring that they (BJP) would make the State government buy it. This is nothing but mischief, playing with the lives of scores of farmers,” he said.

In Siddipet, Finance Minister T Harish Rao stated that farmers were forced to take to streets as for the first time since Independence, the Union government is refusing to buy paddy from a State. He explained that production of raw rice was not possible in the State due to the extremely hot weather conditions that prevail during the summer. In case the paddy produced in Yasangi season was milled without steaming, the percentage of broken rice would be very high up to 50 per cent, making it completely uneconomical. “We are not afraid of BJP branding us anti-national or using Central agencies against us,” he declared.

The TRS leaders questioned the Central government’s double standards over purchasing the entire paddy crop from Punjab ahead of elections but refusing to extend similar support to Telangana State. They demanded that the Centre must make its stance clear on paddy purchases and vowed to step up their protests until there is an assurance in this regard.

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