Farmers with their dumped produce infront of MP D Arvind's house.
Hyderabad: In a development that may come back to haunt Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the central government, in a reply to a Right to Information (RTI) query, said that there is no proposal to set up a turmeric board in Telangana.
The demand to have a separate board from turmeric farmers from Nizamabad district has been simmering from years, which also resulted in Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) MLC and ex-MP from Nizamabad K. Kavitha losing her seat from during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Miffed over their demand not being met, about 180 farmers also contested the poll then, which led to incumbent BJP MP Dharmapuri Arvind winning.
The information about the turmeric board was revealed through an RTI query filed by Hyderabad-based activist Robin Zacheus, who received a reply from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India, on May 30. He had filed his application on May 19.
In his query, Robin also asked for reasons in case the turmeric boardboard is not being set up. However, that was not answered in the RTI response from the central government. BJP MP Arvind in fact won from the Nizamabad seat in 2019 on promises of getting a turmeric board for farmers in Nizamabad district. With this, farmers are now likely to oppose him as well.
In fact, turmeric farmers had dumped their produce in front of Arvind’s residence earlier this month in Nizamabad as a mark of protest for failing to bring a turmeric board for the district. The BJP MP Arvind had promised farmers in the Nizamabad Lok Sabha seat during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls that if elected, he would get the turmeric board sanctioned.
Arvind even promised that If he failed to keep both commitments, he would resign as a member of Parliament and join the farmers and people’s movement.
TRS MLC Kalvakuntla Kavitha earlier in May also attacked Arvind earlier in May for not setting up a turmeric board for farmers as promised. Putting out RTI information on Twitter, Kavitha showed that in 2020-21, a sum of Rs 1,18,71,000 was allocated out of which Rs 75 lakh was assistance towards boilers and Rs 43.71 lakhs is for the assistance towards turmeric polishers.
With the RTI reply to back up her claims, Kavitha said that Rs 39.73 lakh went towards assistance for boilers, Rs 6.58 lakhs for turmeric polishers, Rs 15 lakhs as assistance towards Silpaulin sheets, Rs 10 lakhs towards assistance for Spices Producers group in the identified cluster and Rs 3.50 lakhs for setting up basic quality testing equipment.
Mr Arvind, in the last three years could only get our farmers an allocation of Rs 1.92 crore for close to 1 lakh turmeric producing farmers. If you divide it between all of them, it boils down to less than Rs 250. All he did was deceive farmers by distributing a bond paper,” she remarked.
This post was last modified on May 31, 2022 9:02 pm