Telangana Minister for Agriculture S. Niranjan Reddy has blamed the Centre for forcing the Telangana government to take to streets of Delhi on the issue of paddy procurement. He also faulted the Centre for discriminating between States on the procurement issue in the absence of a national policy.
Speaking at the protest staged in Delhi on Monday demanding the Centre to procure paddy produced during this rabi season in Telangana, he said the demand made by Narendra Modi as the Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2011 on support price as devised by M.S. Swaminathan was before Narendra Modi the Prime Minister now. In 2013, Mr. Modi demanded a uniform procurement policy in an all-India farmers meet held in Gujarat.
During the run up to 2014 Parliament elections, Mr. Modi promised what he had demanded in the past but they remained unfulfilled even in 2022, Mr. Reddy said adding that the Prime Minister’s promise of doubling farmers income by 2022, made in 2016, had in fact doubled the investment instead. Recollecting Union Minister of Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal’s insulting words to make people and farmers of Telangana eat broken rice to overcome the rabi procurement issue, he said the time was not far away when people would make BJP eat such grains.
