The Centre has said no to paddy procurement in Telangana this rabi season as it has reiterated its stand that it would purchase the foodgrains, provided the State Government supplies raw rice by getting the paddy purchased at minimum support price custom milled as raw rice.
“The Centre’s intention is crystal clear that it would not procure paddy in Telangana this season. Knowing well that processing the paddy produced in rabi season as raw rice is not possible, it’s keeping on talking about raw rice,” Telangana Minister for Agriculture S. Niranjan Reddy said after meeting Union Minister for Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal in New Delhi on Thursday, as part of a delegation of Ministers and MPs.
Mr. Niranjan Reddy explained that it was highly uneconomical to process rabi paddy as raw rice due to high broken grain percentage, going up to 50%, owing to the hot weather conditions that prevailed in Telangana during the season. That was why the paddy produced in the State was processed as parboiled rice to keep the out-turn economical.
Mr. Goyal, who spoke to newspersons immediately after the Telangana delegation met him, alleged that there was an anti-farmer government in power in Telangana and it was trying to deceive farmers on paddy procurement issue. He stated that he had told the delegation that the Centre was ready to procure raw rice as agreed by the State in the past.
The Ministry of Food and Public Distribution had held two meetings in February and March with States on paddy procurement this season and collected the details of raw rice they plan to supply. However, Telangana had not given any quantity of raw rice so far, Mr. Goyal said adding that it was ready to procure paddy in Telangana as it was doing in Punjab.
“The Union Minister was simply unwilling to listen to what we wanted to say and instead started reciting what he has been speaking from the word go. He spoke with arrogance and contempt suggesting to the State Government to procure paddy on its own, disregarding the fact that a government can’t export on its own a farm produce procured with subsidy (MSP) as per the WTO norms,” Mr. Niranjan Reddy said.
Now that it had become clear that the Centre would not procure paddy in the State this season, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao would review the issue soon to explore what best could be done to protect farmers’ interests, Mr. Niranjan Reddy said and sought to know whether giving investment support of ₹5,000 per acre for two seasons every year under Rythu Bandhu, providing 24×7 free power and increasing irrigation potential were anti-farmer measures.
