TRS flays Piyush Goyal for 'insulting' Telangana Mantris, MPs

Hyderabad: A day after Union Minister Piyush Goyal's retort on Telangana Ministers over paddy procurement issue, the TRS leaders on Wednesday intensified their fight against Centre stating that the Union Minister's comments were an insult to the entire farming community in the State.

The TRS leaders, including Ministers T Harish Rao and G Jagadish Reddy and Planning Board vice-chairman B Vinod Kumar, came down heavily on the BJP leadership.

Harish said that the comments of Piyush Goyal were highly objectionable. "They (ministers) went to Delhi on behalf of 70 lakh families of farmers. Insulting them with words like "don't you have work" was nothing but denigrating farmers and the people of Telangana," said Harish Rao, demanding the Union Minister to withdraw his comments and apologise to the people of the State.

He further added that the Central Minister behaved like a politician instead of a Minister. "Who has given him the right to insult other Ministers?" he asked. He said that the State government wrote over 10 letters to the Food Corporation of India to procure rice, but there was no response.

Minister Jagadish Reddy said, "Centre said that it would procure more than 40 lakh tonnes, but the FCI authorities said that they had not received any orders." Since the production had gone up in Telangana, the State government was demanding an increase in the procurement, he said. "They said they will inform us in two days. Hence, we were staying in Delhi. Had the Centre given us the letter, we would have come back," said Jagadish Reddy, alleging that the Congress party was working like a tail party for the BJP.

Vinod Kumar said that Piyush Goyal was born and brought up in Mumbai and was totally ignorant of rural issues and agriculture. "He is not fit to be Minister for public distribution and procurement," he said, adding that the Centre gave national project status to Bhadra project in Karnataka and Rs 40,000 crore to Polavaram, but did not any recognition to projects in Telangana.