Centre advances MSP implementation

New Delhi: The Centre has agreed to advance minimum support price (MSP) implementation for buying green gram in Telangana State to September hereafter and has agreed to issue orders to the effect on Thursday itself. This was revealed by Irrigation Minister T Harish Rao to the media here on Wednesday.

Harish Rao, who met Union Minister Radha Mohan Singh on Wednesday afternoon, brought to his notice that this year the yield of green gram would crossed one lakh metric tonne and the arrivals had already begun. The Centre applied the MSP of Rs 5,500 (per quintal) from October first week but the farmers of Telangana would be disadvantaged by the same.

Hence, the State government was insisting on implementing the same from September itself and the Union Minister directed his officials to issue the order in the first hour on Thursday, he said.

He had also agreed to release the pending fund for infrastructure development in eNAMs in the State (Rs 45 lakh each) without further delay as Telangana had made good strides in establishing such markets ahead of others. Already 44 eNAMs had been established and 14 more were coming up, he said.

Towards construction of godowns, Rs 125 crore had been released and Rs 132 crore more would be released soon, the State was assured. Similarly knitting of weighment and payment ends of the markets was also discussed and the Minister agreed to implement it faster.

The Centre also agreed to establish two Krishi Vigyan Kendras, one each in Sircilla and Mahbubnagar. Harish Rao said Union Minister Smriti Irani too agreed to increase the cotton procurement centres of CCI to 146 from the present 80 and odd in view of the increased cotton yield in the State due to increased acreage.

She directed Textiles Secretary Anant Kumar Singh to visit Telangana on September 15 to sort out the issues related to cotton procurement including increasing the working days to six in a week. She suggested to Harish Rao to get ginning mills notified as procurement centres to help the farmers further while issuing I-cards to the latter.

Harish said he had appealed to the Minister to delink Alair and Suryapet markets from the newly-established CCI branch at Mahbubnagar and attach the two towns to Warangal for better administration and she positively responded.

He said he met the Secretary of Environment and Forests K N Jha to plead for early forest clearances for the Kaleswaram project. Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) Parliamentary Party Leader A P Jitender Reddy and MP Gutha Sukender Reddy accompanied Harish Rao along with the Principal Resident Commissioner Aravind Kumar.