Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) founder-president and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has asked the farming community (Shetkari Sanghatan) of Maharashtra to prove their mettle in elections and make it to law-making bodies to change their fate on their own stating that they are capable of making laws.
Addressing a public meeting at Aurangabad on Monday night, Mr. Rao said removing one party from power and installing another would not help them now as the country needed a qualitative change in the polity. People and farmers were being denied basic needs such as supply of treated drinking water every day, quality power to farming and other sectors and irrigation facility to every acre of cultivable land even 75 years after the country’s Independence.
“Governments have changed. Parties have changed but the fate of the people remained as it is. There was some planning with vision during Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s regime, but later it was given way to petty politics forgetting priorities of the country,” the BRS chief said. Even a small country like Zimbabwe had a reservoir with 6,500 tmc ft storage capacity and there’s not even one in India, he alleged.
He stated that there is a need of at least 3-4 such huge reservoirs to tackle the problems of floods and drought in the country. There is huge cultivable land resource and abundant water availability in the country but people are being denied even drinking water, lest irrigation facility to the entire land, he said.
Giving examples of farmers and people-friendly schemes schemes such as Rythu Bandhu, Rythu Bima, Dalit Bandhu, Mission Bhagiratha, 24x7 free power to farm pumpsets and others, Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao sought to know when a State with limited resources such as Telangana is able realise, then why couldn’t they be given in Maharashtra with greater resources. He assured implementation of all the schemes in Maharashtra if people bless BRS.
Lashing out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi indirectly, the Chief Minister said they want people to watch cheetahs brought from Namibia when tens of farmers are ending lives in Maharashtra everyday out of distress. “It’s time people turn tigers for their rights,” he suggested.
It was BRS’ third public meeting in Maharashtra, after Nanded (February 5) and Kandhar-Loha (March 26). Earlier, after reaching Aurangabad, Mr. Rao along with others drove straight to the residence of Abhay Kailash Patil Chikatgaokar, son of a two-time former MLA and discussed about the BRS activities in Central Maharashtra.
He was accompanied by MPs K. Keshava Rao, G. Ranjith Reddy, J. Santosh Kumar and B.B. Patil, legislators K. Srihari, S. Madhusudana Chary, A. Jeevan Reddy, B. Suman, Deshapathi Srinivas, former Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar and others.
