Hyderabad: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday appealed to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government to immediately release the payments due to farmers regarding paddy procured from them during the Yasangi (Rabi) season.
In a letter written to chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, Telangana BJP president Bandi Sanjay Kumar said the state government had taken up the purchase of paddy produced during the Yasangi season after a prolonged struggle by the BJP.
“However, in many districts, the government had not made payments to the farmers for the paddy procured from them, causing a lot of anxiety for them. As the Kharif season has commenced, the farmers don’t have money to take up cultivation, as a result of which they are forced to depend on private money lenders,” he said.
Sanjay alleged the farmers haven’t received the money for the paddy they had produced during the Yasangi season and the state government has not yet made payments under the Rythu Bandhu scheme for the Kharif season. “Taking advantage of their situation, the private money lenders were charging high interest on the crop loans,” he said.
“In the erstwhile combined Karimnagar district, the state government had procured 11.2 lakh metric tonnes of paddy from 1,91,852 farmers through 1,286 procurement centres. The total cost of the paddy was Rs 2,197.16 crore, but the government was still due to pay Rs 517.16 crore to the farmers,” he criticised.
Sanjay alleged that because of the indecisive and arrogant attitude of the state government, the farmers had not raised paddy in 14 lakh acres in the state during the Rabi season. “Though the BJP government at the centre had given a lot of clarity on paddy procurement in Telangana, the arrogant attitude state government had made innocent farmers a scapegoat for its political benefits,” he remarked.
Stating that the Telangana government had little concern towards the farming community, Sanjay said it was unfortunate that neither the agriculture minister nor the officials of the department had made any field visits to understand the farmers’ problems even after the commencement of the Kharif season.
He demanded that the government should immediately release the money due to the farmers for the Yasangi season, besides taking steps to arrange seeds and fertilisers for them at the earliest, so that they could commence the agriculture operations.
Sanjay also wanted that the district collectors hold meetings with all farmers’ associations and political parties to discuss the farmers’ issues and extend the input cost. “It is time the chief minister comes out of his farmhouse and reviews the problems being faced by the farmers,” he said.
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