Uttam ridicules agri award to KCR

Hyderabad: Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president N Uttam Kumar Reddy reiterated the allegation that the Agriculture Leadership Award being conferred by the Indian Council for Food & Agriculture (ICFA), an organisation of dubious background, on Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao was totally fake.

“In the last four years of his governance, Chandrashekar Rao has pushed the farming community into its most serious crisis ever. The result of failure to implement his assurance on farm loan waiver, failure to provide MSP to farmers, and lack of pro-active measures by the government have led over 3,500 farmers to commit suicide. In this background, it is shocking that any worthwhile organisation would present agriculture achievement award to Chandrashekar Rao,” he said.

“Although we leave accepting or not accepting the award to the wisdom of the Chief Minister, any agriculture award to Chandrashekar Rao is completely unacceptable as he is responsible for pushing Telangana's farm sector into deepest crisis," said Uttam Kumar Reddy while addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan on Wednesday. He said that a fake award was being given by a letter-head organisation whose chief was affiliated to the BJP.

Uttam Kumar Reddy, along with TPCC chief spokesperson Dr Dasoju Sravan, vice president Mallu Ravi and MLA A Sampath Kumar, gave a detailed power-point presentation on the ICFA and its antecedents. He said as per the records of Registrar of Companies, ICFA was a private organisation which was registered on 5th June, 2015. He said how a company registered in 2015 could claim that it had been giving awards from 2008, he asked.

Further, he said ICFA was wholly and solely owned, controlled and funded by M J Khan, who had business interests in companies such as M/s. Concept Agrotech Consultants Limited and M/s. Bhagidhari Agrotech Private Limited which were essentially commercial organisations having business interests in agricultural and related activities.

Uttam Kumar Reddy said the ICFA's balance sheets, as on March 31st, 2016, showed that no payments/salaries were paid to employees and no expenses were incurred in promotional activities or for any activity of any nature in the business year 2015-16.

He asked how the ICFA was organising awards ceremonies without any trace of expenditure. He also pointed that the ICFA, in its brochure, listed organising ‘networking dinners with Ministers and other dignitaries’ as one its activities. “Is it a broker firm or a PR company?” he asked.

The TPCC chief also played an old video-clip of August 19, 2013, wherein Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh was welcoming ICFA head MJ Khan into the BJP fold.

Uttam Kumar Reddy condemned the hype created around the award by the Chief Minister’s Office and described it as misleading. However, he said he would not comment on the press release sent by Governor ESL Narasimhan by wrongly mentioning that the Chief Minister was being given an award by the Government of India.