Ponnam Prabhakar accuses KCR of ignoring tenant farmers in Rythu Bandhu Scheme

Karimnagar: The onus was always on the government to identify the real beneficiaries, Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) vice-president and former MP Ponnam Prabhakar said, accusing Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao of trying to evade the demand of extending the Rythu Bandhu Scheme (RBS) to tenant farmers.

He said, in an open letter to the Chief Minister on Thursday, that the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government was trying to help the affluent sections of the society while leaving the poor and downtrodden to their fate.

“According to Chandrashekar Rao, the main obstacle to provide financial assistance to tenant farmers under Rythu Bandhu is absence of lease agreements and change of tenant farmers every year. This is where the government functionaries need to step in and identify the real cultivators,” Prabhakar said.

Instead of providing assistance to the cultivators, the government washed its hands by distributing public money to land owners, he criticised, stating that there was no point in helping the landlords who did not cultivate.

“Chandrashekar Rao needs to understand the fact that almost 70 per cent of farmers who committed suicide in the last four years were tenant farmers,” Prabhakar said, demanding justice for 14 lakh tenant farmers and Podu cultivators in the State. Only a few landlords returned the cheques they received under Rythu Bandhu Scheme to the government while the others made hay of it, he added.