Telangana: Centre's fiat brings in rice truce

Hyderabad: Creating a win-win situation for both the BJP and TRS on the issue of paddy procurement, the Union government has agreed to enhance the quantum of paddy procurement from 40 lakh metric tonnes to 46 lakh metric tonnes.

This was announced by the Union Ministry of Food and Public Distribution on Tuesday. With this enhancement, the Centre would be procuring nearly 90 per cent of rice, including 25 lakh MT for PDS (Public Distribution System) out of the 77-lakh metric tonnes produced from Telangana this year. It may be recalled that the Telangana government had demanded that the Centre buy the entire quantity of rice procured in the State.

The State feels that the Centre had to finally buckle under the pressure of the TRS government which had gone to Delhi and met Union Minister Public Distribution Piyush Goyal. It had also threatened to take 1,000 truckloads of rice and dump it in New Delhi.

But the BJP leaders here claim that the Centre had always said that it would procure rice from Telangana liberally. It had only said that it would not buy parboiled rice, but it was the TRS which had been creating the wrong impression among the people and farmers. BJP was never against buying paddy but unnecessarily the TRS party and government had tried to paint BJP as the culprit while they themselves so far could not come up with the rabi action plan for agriculture.