Hyderabad: Stop the blame game and rescue farmers

Hyderabad: The Congress party on Thursday held a massive protest demanding the State and Central governments to immediately procure paddy from the farmers, and took out a rally from Public Gardens to the Agriculture Commissioner's office.

Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee chief A Revanth Reddy, CLP leader Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, MP N Uttam Kumar Reddy, leaders Damodara Rajanarasimha, MLA Seethakka and others took part. Addressing the protestors, Revanth said that the condition of paddy farmers had turned vulnerable, and accused the Central and the State governments of playing blame game making the farmers as scapegoats. He made it clear that paddy was part of the list of 13 crops to which the Centre had announced Minimum Support Price.

Stating that the State was able to procure only 11 lakh metric tonnes of paddy so far, the TPCC chief alleged that 4,743 paddy procurement centres were opened by the authorities just for name sake. He said that only Rs 116 crore was paid to farmers instead of Rs 2,100 crore as claimed by the governments. He pointed out that lakhs of quintals of paddy was being damaged due to untimely rain.

"Farmers are committing suicides in Minister KTR's constituency of Sircilla," he said, alleging that rice millers have opened their gates to loot farmers. Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka wondered as to why the government, which has the responsibility to procure paddy, held a dharna on the issue. The CLP leader suspected that a conspiracy was being hatched to help corporate companies by not procuring paddy. "Both the State and the Central governments are doing injustice to farmers by blaming each other," he said.