Telangana Congress sees collusion between the rice millers and the state government to make money with the former procuring paddy from the farmers at a reduced price below the Minimum Support Price (MSP) and the latter purchasing the same from the millers at MSP.
“There is a clear ploy to cheat the paddy farmers and the whole drama of fight against the Central government is created to push the farmers into some confusion to force them to sell their produce cheaply,” Congress leader Madhu Yaskhi Goud alleged at a press conference.
“When the majority produce is purchased by the farmers then Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao will come into the picture assuring the farmers that state government would buy the paddy as the Centre was not willing. Rice millers will then sell at MSP of ₹1900 to the government,” Mr. Goud claimed and said this was part of a conspiracy to benefit the millers lobby where the TRS leaders were involved.
Questioning the sincerity of the Chief Minister, he said KCR was making no efforts to meet the Prime Minister despite being in New Delhi for several days while Ministers were sitting on dharnas in the state. “Farmers have realised this conspiracy and the Congress would continue to sensitise the farmers.”
He wondered why the paddy procurement was not seen in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka and that too from the last season. From 2014 to 2018 when the BJP and TRS had an open friendship this problem never occurred. “This sudden creation of the paddy crisis is nothing but KCR’s effort to bring BJP into the main electoral league as the Congress had emerged strong to defeat the TRS,” he claimed.
Mr. Goud hoped that the Governor, Tamilisai Soundararajan had mentioned this conspiracy in her report to the Prime Minister and the Home Minister. He demanded that the Centre intervene immediately to ensure that government money for procurements goes into farmers’s hands and not the rice millers.
On the government’s claim that it always respected the Governor, he said TRS found former Governor ESL Narasimhan as an amicable man as he ignored corruption in the Kaleshwaram project. However, it doesn’t want to treat the present Governor with respect as she was a lady and also belonged to the backward classes.
