Hyderabad: Telangana Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Bandi Sanjay Kumar on Saturday alleged that the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government’s politics on paddy procurement hints towards a large scale conspiracy to help the middlemen make hundreds of crores and diverting the anger of the farmers towards the Centre.
In an open letter to the Telangana farming community, Sanjay said by closing down the paddy procurement centres during Yasangi (Rabi) season, the Telangana government was creating an inevitable situation for the farmers to sell their produce to middlemen at a very lower rate than the minimum support price (MSP).
“It is a conspiracy hatched by chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao in collusion with the rice millers’ mafia t
Stating that the closure of the paddy procurement centres during the Rabi season was part of the largescale conspiracy of the KCR government, the BJP president said since the farmers would question the government for not purchasing the paddy, the TRS leaders were hitting the roads to divert the farmers’ anger towards the Centre.
He said the Centre would pay an MSP of Rs 1,960 per quintal of paddy during the Rabi season. The farmers have already started harvesting the crop and in several districts like Nalgonda, Khammam and Warangal, the farmers have started bring their produce to the market.
The BJP president said sensing that there would be severe unrest among the farmers due to non-payment of MSP for their produce and that might lead to largescale agitation against the government, the ruling TRS leaders backed by KCR have started enacting a big drama by taking up agitation against the Centre. Stating that the Central government is always for the welfare of farmers, Sanjay said it was ready to purchase every grain produced by them. It has been following a uniform policy across the country and this year, too, it was following the same in case of Telangana.
At the meeting held by the Centre with all the states on February 25 this year, the Telangana government had not submitted the details of how much rice it would supply to the Centre. “It is shameful on their part to create nuisance now, stating that the Centre itself should purchase paddy,” he said.