'Maha Dharna' a reason to repeal farm laws: TRS

KARIMNAGAR: TS Planning Board Vice Chairman B Vinod Kumar on Friday welcomed PM Narendra Modi's decision to repeal the farm bills and apologizing to the farmers, who had been fighting against the Central government to abolish the bills.

Showing concern on 1,200 farmers deaths during the last one year due to their protests against the farm laws, he suggested that the government should provide reasonable compensation to the farmers families who lost their lives on a humanitarian ground.

Speaking on the occasion, Vinod Kumar said that Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao's Maha Dharna in Hyderabad along with his Cabinet Ministers, MPs, MLAs and MLCs and party leaders was also one of the reasons for the Prime Minister to abolish the controversial farm bills. He stated that in the wake of 'BJP hatao – Desh bachao' campaign going on in northern India and also elections round the corner in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the Union government had announced the repealing of the farm laws.

He demanded that the PM to announce removal of cess on the petroleum products and allot the collected cess to the respective States.

Ridiculing the state BJP president and Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay dual standards on the farmers' issues and provoking them to cultivate only paddy, he asked whether he knows about the Union government clearly stating that they would not procure paddy cultivated during the rabi season. Reminding that there was huge paddy production throughout the world, he said that the farmers should be educated to take up alternate crops to harvest riches instead of completely depending on paddy.

He flayed the BJP state president for planning to organize protests against the petroleum products prices in the Telangana on pretext of imposition of VAT. Reiterating that the Telangana government had not imposed any VAT on petrol, he said that the Central government had imposed heavy cess on petrol and demanded the BJP leader to ensure that the cess was removed as soon as possible.

He also alleged that the Centre had diverted all the fertilizers required for the Telangana State to the poll related States in north India. Manakondur MLA Rasamayi Balakishan, former MLAs Arepalli Mohan and Konduru Satyanarayana Goud, former Mayor S Ravinder Singh and others were present.