BJP slams KCR for calling agri Bills as sugar-coated pills

Hyderabad: State BJP chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar termed the remarks made by Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao on the Centre's agriculture reform bills as baseless. It can be recalled that the TRS president, making it clear that his party will oppose the agriculture reform bills in the Parliament, has called them as sugar-coated pills detrimental to the farmers' welfare.

Taking exception to these remarks, the BJP chief reiterated that the Central government under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was always committed to the welfare of farmers.

In a letter to K Chandrashekar Rao, Sanjay stated that CM's remarks on the said bills were baseless and added it was not good on the part of K Chandrashekar Rao and his party to raise unnecessary apprehensions in the minds of Telangana farmers and confuse them.

Reminding the rotting paddy stocks at the IKP centres and loss to horticulture farmers during the lockdown period, the Karimnagar MP stated that the unholy alliance between the middlemen and the political parties appointed market committee chairpersons was leaving farmers in losses with most of them not even getting the Minimum Support Price.

Informing that the Centre was going to set up about 22,000 new markets under Atma Nirbhar Bharat, Sanjay said about 1,000 markets were going to come up in Telangana. Wouldn't the new markets going to be established with the Central funding in the State help the farmers in Telangana? he asked the Chief Minister, adding that whether the Chief Ministers committee and its recommendations were not part of drafting the agriculture reform bills?

Meanwhile, State BJP Kisan Morcha president Kondapalli Sridhar Reddy welcomed the passage of agriculture bills in the Parliament. He said the TRS chief was coming up with baseless apprehensions with regard to bills. He reminded how the market committee and the middlemen had fixed low prices at the Khammam Chilli Market Yard. When the farmers asked for the reason for slashing prices, they were handcuffed and sent them behind the bars, he recalled.

In a separate statement, party chief spokesperson K Krishna Saagar Rao, welcoming the passage of bills in Parliament, hoped that the bills would pave way for making agriculture profitable to farmers. He called the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020, as landmark bills that have the potential to transform the agricultural sector profitable to small and marginal farmers.