Telangana speeds up process for paddy procurement

Hyderabad: With resurge of corona cases in the State, the Telangana government has decided to procure paddy during the summer season in all the villages across the State through 6,408 procurement centres.

Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao took this decision during a high-level meeting on Agriculture, Marketing and Civil Supplies department on Monday. The Chief Minister directed Finance Principal Secretary Ramakrishna Rao to make all arrangements to give Rs 20,000 crore bank guarantee by Tuesday evening.

The Chief Minister also asked Chief secretary Somesh Kumar to conduct an emergency video conference with the Collectors for setting up of procurement centres. He also asked Agriculture Minister S Niranjan Reddy to be in Hyderabad and monitor the setting up of procurement centres and also the procurement process.

Rao wanted the officials to take all precautions so that farmers do not face any difficulties during procurement. He said that Minimum Support Price conditions should be implemented and ensured, while farmers bring their paddy to the centres.

The CM wanted the farmers to ensure that the paddy they were bringing should not have more than 17 per cent moisture. He asked the officials to keep the 20 crore gunny bags ready at these centres.

Stating that the cotton produced in Telangana had a better price in the international market and higher price, the farmers may be looking to grow cotton in 75 to 80 lakh acres. He asked Agriculture Principal Secretary Janardhan Reddy to make arrangements for the procurement of the seed. Similarly, arrangements should also be made to cultivate red gram in 20 to 25 lakh acres in the State.

The CM said if cotton and red gram crops were given water periodically, the yield would be more.

Rao said that during summer, paddy has been cultivated in 52.76 lakh acres with the yield expected at 1.17 crore metric tonnes of the coarse variety paddy and 21 lakh metric tonnes of fine variety.

He instructed the Chief Secretary to identify lands to be given on lease to the Central Ware Housing Corporation, which is ready to construct additional warehouses to store the food grains.

Ensure water to tail end lands: CM

The Chief Minister instructed the Water Resources department officials to ensure that water is supplied to the lands under the irrigation projects for another 10 days so that the crops would not dry.

He said farmers from Suryapet district were complaining that tail end lands were not getting water and hence, the officials should ensure that water is supplied and not even a single acre should be dried up due to lack of water.

He instructed Engineer-in-Chief B Shankar over phone to supply Kaleshwaram water to tail end lands in Suryapet district under the jurisdiction of Lower Manair Dam to DBM-71.