Stop playing politics with farmers: TRS to BJP

Farmers told to protest in every village on December 20 against the Centre’s attitude on paddy procurement

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) has asked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) not to play politics with farmers and instead work on their welfare. The party has also asked farmers to take to protests till the Centre changed its stand on the issue of paddy procurement.

Speaking to reporters here on Saturday, party legislators G. Venkataramana Reddy and S. Venkata Veeraiah said that the entire farming community of Telangana was deeply concerned over the Centre’s ‘discrimination’ in the matter of paddy procurement. Stating that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has become more popular with his pro-farmer schemes, they alleged that the Centre was acting only with an intention to “demoralise farmers and make the CM a culprit”.

The TRS legislators said that the government has the export policy under its control and could procure and export rice even if it was being produced in surplus. “Even people and parties from other States are hailing the schemes in Telangana such as uninterrupted free power for agriculture, investment support of ₹5,000 per acre for two crop season under Rythu Bandhu, ₹5 lakh each insurance cover given to all landholding farmers below 60 years of age irrespective of the cause of death, and improving irrigation facilities,” they noted.