All India Kisan Sabha national president Ravula Venkaiah demanded that the Andhra Pradesh government provide input assistance of ₹10,000 per acre to farmers and tenant farmers and ₹20,000 per acre to those cultivating crops on less than two acres to help them tide over the crisis in the agriculture sector.
He said the farmers were unable to fetch the Minimum Support Prices (MSP) for their produce, which the Central and the State governments should take serious note of and take remedial action.
Addressing a demonstration organised by the A.P. Rythu Sangham at Dharna Chowk on Monday to mount pressure on the Central and State governments to take steps for solving the problems faced by the farming community, Mr. Venkaiah said the Telangana government was giving input assistance to the farmers and said the A.P. government should follow suit to enable them to cope with the prevailing distress.
He alleged that each farmer in A.P. has a debt burden of ₹2.45 lakh and the State stood third in the country in farmer suicides, a majority of whom were tenant farmers.
He insisted that the farm loans up to ₹2 lakh should be waived to bail out the debt - ridden farmers. Further, he expressed regret that the Swaminathan Commission recommendations were confined to rhetoric, and added that the Central government did not have the courage to pass legislation that would guarantee the support prices for crops.
Former Minister Vadde Sobhanadreeswara Rao said the compensation for loss of crops and insurance were not being paid to the farmers and that the BJP-led NDA government went back on the promises made by it during the farmers’ prolonged agitation against the controversial farm laws.
He demanded that the State government give up the installation of smart meters for agriculture power connections, saying that it was in no way beneficial to the farmers.
CPI national executive member Akkineni Vanaja, All India Trade Union Congress State president R. Ravindranath, AP Tenant Farmers’ Association president A. Katamaiah and general secretary P. Jamalayya and others were present.
