Telangana Minister for Agriculture S. Niranjan Reddy has alleged that the Centre is giving step-motherly treatment to Telangana on several issues, including on procurement of paddy.
Speaking at New Delhi on Thursday after meeting Union Minister for Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal along with three other Ministers – G. Kamalakar, V. Prashanth Reddy and P. Ajay Kumar – and a few MPs of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), he explained how Mr. Goyal’s talk of procuring paddy in Telangana on the lines of Punjab is dubious.
He stated that paddy was grown only in Kharif season in Punjab and it would be processed only as raw rice, and in rabi, the northern State would produce wheat. Whereas in Telangana, major crop in both the seasons would be paddy with the kharif production useful for raw rice and rabi produce for parboiled rice due to the hot weather conditions during the season.
The refusal of the Centre to procure rabi paddy in Telangana is against what Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke on September 9, 2013 when he convened an all-India farmers meeting at Gandhinagar as the Chief Minister of Gujarat and said the then Manmohan Singh government at the Centre was not making best use of the agricultural produce and if voted to power BJP would take care of farmers in all respects, Mr. Niranjan Reddy pointed out.
Instead of doubling the farmers’ income by 2022 as promised by it in 2014, the Narendra Modi government had distorted the minimum support price formula recommended by M.S. Swaminathan to make farming remunerative by removing several costs of cultivation from cost of production and claiming that it was giving MSP., including 50% more than the cost of cultivation, he alleged.
He also accused the State BJP of playing with the lives of farmers in Telangana as the party leaders kept on asking farmers to go for paddy itself and it would make the produce procured at any cost, when the State Government was advising against paddy cultivation. In spite of BJP’s misguidance, the government was able to convince farmers to restrict paddy cultivation to 35 lakh acres this Rabi season against 55 lakh acres cultivated in the last Rabi season.
On being informed about Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue with a request to start deliberations on evolving a unified national foodgrain procurement policy, Mr. Goyal said “it was not his job” and instead suggested “aap (Telangana) hi kharidlo aur aawam ko parboiled rice khane ka aadat kar do” (make your people consume parboiled rice by procuring paddy on your own), the Minister said.
