Uttam: TRS govt, Centre jointly ruined paddy farmers in State

Hyderabad: Congress MP & former TPCC president N Uttam Kumar Reddy on Wednesday alleged that the TRS government and the Centre have jointly destroyed the paddy farmers of Telangana.

He said that the Union Minister of State for Rural Development, Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, in a reply to a question raised by him in the Lok Sabha admitted that the Centre has drastically reduced the paddy procurement from the State.

As per the statistics of procured paddy placed in the Lok Sabha by the Union Minister, as against 61.87 lakh metric tonnes procured in Rabi 2020-21, the Union government procured just 28.96 MLTs in Rabi 2021-22. "By reducing the procurement by more than 50 per cent, the Centre tried to throttle the livelihood of lakhs of paddy farmers of Telangana. Further, by remaining a mute spectator, TRS government played a heinous role in destroying the paddy farmers," he alleged.

In reply to Uttam's question on whether the procurement of rice in the Rabi crop of 2022 has been stopped from Telangana, the Union Minister admitted that the rice receipt operations were suspended briefly from July 6 to 19 due to non-distribution of rice under PMKAY Phase-VI and non-action against default millers. "The BJP government is trying to mislead the people by saying that it did not stop procurement but suspended. The statistics clearly show that the procurement has been reduced by more than half affected lakhs of paddy farmers," he said.

The Congress leader demanded Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao to explain, "why no action was taken against the rice millers who procured paddy under custom milling and did not supply rice. Why is that even till today KCR is not acting against defaulted rice millers who have acquired government paddy running into hundreds of crores? Was it done deliberately to provide the BJP government with an excuse to stop paddy procurement from Telangana? The CM must explain why ration card-holders were not supplied under the Prime Minister Gharib Kalyan Yojana, as mentioned by the Centre in the Lok Sabha in an answer today?" he asked.