Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) has alleged that the Centre is playing with the lives of farmers in the State by not lifting custom milled rice (CMR) for about 45 days now, resulting in piling up of huge paddy stocks with the millers and consequently their damage due to being kept in the open areas due to lack of storage space.
Addressing a press conference here on Friday, Rythu Bandhu Samithi (RBS) chairman Palla Rajeshwar Reddy, legislators M.S. Prabhakar Rao, Jajula Surender and Yegge Mallesham said they doubt whether Union Minister G. Kishan Reddy and BJP State president Bandi Sanjay were sons of the soil of Telangana as their actions were harming the interests of farmers, particularly those raising paddy.
They asked the two BJP leaders to recollect what they had spoken in November last — that of asking farmers to go for paddy cultivation itself when the State government was advising them against it due to Centre’s refusal to procure parboiled rice produced in the rabi season. The TRS leaders reminded the BJP leaders that they had assured the farming community of making Centre procure paddy.
However, the Centre had started specifying conditions after the farming community took up paddy cultivation in the last rabi season. Over 90 lakh tonnes of paddy stocks were lying with the millers as the latter were unable to mill them due to lack of assurance from the Centre to lift the CMR. Workers depending on functioning of 3,303 rice mills in the State for their livelihood were unable to get any wage work for the last 45 days, Mr. Rajeshwar Reddy explained.
The TRS leaders said Telangana government had procured 50 lakh tonnes of rabi paddy spending ₹20,000 crore. The Centre was unmoved even when the paddy stored outside the mills was sprouting after getting soaked in rain. The TRS would stage protests in front of BJP offices demanding lifting of CMR by the Centre and would question BJP leaders even in villages.
On the flooding of two Kaleshwaram pump houses, the RBS chairman said it was common when rivers witness unprecedented flood and the government would get the pump houses revived after flood water recedes.
