Union Budget anti-farmer, charges Niranjan Reddy

Hyderabad: Telangana Agriculture Minister S Niranjan Reddy called the union budget 2023-24 an anti-farmers budget. Reacting to the union budget presented in the Parliament on Wednesday, he said the allocation for the agriculture sector had gone down by 22 percent to that of the allocations of the previous financial year.

He said the Centre had allocated Rs 2.25 lakh crore during the previous financial year as against Rs 1.75 lakh crore proposed in the current budget.The budget also indicates the gradual removal of fertilizer subsidies burdening the farmers who are already finding it tough to bear the hiked prices of fertilizers, diesel, and petrol.

The Centre, which had boasted till 2022 to double the income of the farmers, has remained silent on the same in the union budget. Reduction in the MGNREGA allocations to the tune of Rs 29,400 crore, no increase to the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Yojana, but allocated Rs 1,249 crore increased to a failed crop insurance scheme.

A lower allocation of Rs 1 lakh crore points that the Cotton Corporation of India is a vanishing entity and it is detrimental to the interests of the cotton farmers, he criticised. Niranjan Reddy said that the PM Pranam Scheme meant to divert farmers to adopt alternate fertilizers, got nothing in the budget.

Further, as usual, the budget ignored the demands of Telangana, especially, the Palamuru Ranga Reddy lift irrigation scheme. But, an allocation of Rs 5,300 was made to the upper Bhadra Project in poll-bound Karnataka state, he said.