Mangalagiri: TDP demands good prices to crops

Mangalagiri: TDP former MLA Dhulipalla Narendra Kumar on Friday urged Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy to take immediate steps to ensure remunerative prices for crops so as to rescue farmers from debts and resolve the crisis in agriculture.

In an open letter to the Chief Minister here, Narendra Kumar said that all the 13 districts in the state were facing problems but the government was giving wrong figures to ignore the crisis situation. The farmers were declaring crop holidays in coastal Andhra while onion and tomato farmers suffered heavy losses in Rayalaseema. In Anantapur alone, crops in 10 lakh acre were damaged. Farmers' suicides were on the rise all over. However, the meters were being fixed on agriculture motors.

The TDP leader posed a series of questions to the Chief Minister, asking why the government had reduced the input subsidy to Rs 16,000 per hectare to the affected farmers affected by seven cyclones and untimely rains in the past two-and-a-half years. The TDP government gave Rs 20,000 during the Titli cyclone. The government promised to pay crop insurance but did not do so. When the farmers were about to suffer heavy losses, former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu squatted on the floor of the House. Following this, the Jagan government issued a midnight GO in a hurried manner, he reminded.

Narendra Kumar asked whether it was not a betrayal on the part of Jagan to give just Rs 7,500 under Rythu Bharosa. In the YSRCP plenary in 2017 itself, Jagan Mohan Reddy announced that Rs 13,500 would be given to the farmers over and above the PM Kisan assistance.

Each farmer was losing Rs 6,000 per year and Rs 30,000 during the five year term. Rythu Bharosa was promised to 64 lakh farmers but now it was being given to just 45 lakh. The Chief Minister promised Rythu Bharosa to 15 lakh tenant farmers but now only 49,000 were being covered, the TDP leader said.

He alleged that for the first time, Rythu Bharosa was being denied to the farmers along caste lines. The TDP leader slammed the YSRCP government for 'blackmailing' the farmers by threatening to cancel the government benefits if they would not sell their milk to Amul. The Polavaram dam storage capacity was being reduced from 150 feet to 15 ft only to appease Telangana Chief Minister and to reduce the resettlement package. "Is it not a betrayal of the AP farmers by Jagan Mohan Reddy? The budget for irrigation projects in all districts has been reduced by half when compared with the previous TDP rule. Is it not a failure of the Chief Minister to prevent the neighbouring states from constructing illegal projects?," he said.