Union Minister of State for Tourism G. Kishan Reddy has said that the bad blood between Telangana and Central governments over the controversy around paddy procurement owed itself to defeat of TRS in the byelection to Huzurabad Assembly constituency.
If the TRS had won the election, the situation would have been different, Mr. Reddy told a media interaction here on Sunday.
He blamed the State government for not attending a meeting convened by the Centre to discuss the action plan for paddy procurement some months ago. Telangana was the only State that was not represented at the meeting. Nonetheless, an agreement signed by the State last year not to supply boiled rice to the Food Corporation of India was the root cause of the Centre’s refusal to lift stocks from the State.
