Telangana provided Rs 35,660 cr to farmers under RBS: Niranjan Reddy

Hyderabad: Agriculture Minister S Niranjan Reddy said that the State provided about Rs 35,660 crore financial assistance to farmers since 2018 under the Rythu Bandhu Scheme (RBS).

He said on Monday that starting with the Kharif season of 2018, the State government in the first phase of RBS had issued cheques and subsequently, the assistance money was directly credited into the farmers' bank accounts.

For the last three years, the State government has provided Rs 28,000 per acre to farmers. During the Yasangi agriculture season, Rs 7351.74 crore have been credited into the 59.16 lakh accounts. Similarly, during the current year for the two agriculture seasons, about Rs 14,640 crore have been credited, he informed.

In all, Rs 10,488.19 crore in 2018-19 for 50.25 lakh farmers, Rs 10,532.02 crore during 2019-20 for 51.61 lakh farmers and Rs 7,288.70 crore during 2020 rainy season for 59.02 lakh farmers have been disbursed under the RBS.

The entire disbursal has been done transparently without the interference of any middlemen. The main focus was to give enough support to farmers, he said. Thanking the Chief Minister for taking several schemes like RBS, free power, farmers insurance etc to make agriculture profitable for farmers, the Minister said TS agriculture polices were role models for the entire country with many being replicated in other States. He criticised that the Centre instead of giving confidence to farmers has been trying to corporatise the agriculture, which he said was not good on the Centre's part.