Telangana CM KCR denies farmers benefits of Centre's Agriculture schemes: BJP Krishna Saagar Rao

Hyderabad: Alleging that the Chief Minister's has callous disregard to farmers' welfare and agriculture reforms, BJP on Monday said that by not implementing Central schemes Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao is depriving the farmers of huge benefits.

In a statement, Telangana BJP chief spokesperson K Krishna Saagar Rao said that his party strongly feels that political expediency is denying farmers in Telangana the advantage of utilising massive funds being allocated by the Centre to ensure doubling of farmers' income.

He welcomed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Rs1 lakh crore Aatma Nirbhar Krishi scheme which can benefit over 30 crore farmers.

He said Rs 1 lakh crore will be provided by banks and financial institutions as loans with interest subvention of 3 per cent annually and credit guarantee coverage for loans up to Rs 2 crore. The beneficiaries will include farmers, primary agriculture credit societies (PACS), marketing cooperative societies, farmer-producer organisations, self-help groups, joint liability groups, multi-purpose cooperative societies, agri-entrepreneurs, start-ups etc.

However, he added, unfortunately, Telangana has only around 802 PACs, out of which, many are non-functional. Against this, the neighbouring Karnataka has over 2,280 PACs. This highlights the massive gap in Telangana in utilising the huge fund allocation to farmers in the form of easy-to-access loans by the Centre.

The BJP leader alleged that his party sees that both the Chief Minister and the State Agriculture Minister are in deep slumber and depriving farmers of the State by not implementing central schemes like the Aatma Nirbhar Krishi scheme, which can benefit crores of farmers.