The Opposition Telugu Desam Party will embark on a massive agitation in support of farmers across the State as they were an unenvious lot with ever-increasing cost of cultivation on the one hand and unremunerative prices for their produce on the other, according to TDP polit bureau member Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy.
The TDP leader, who chaired a meeting with the party functionaries here on Saturday, announced ''Rythu Poru Baata'' in all the 25 Lok Sabha constituencies in the State. The TDP would take up a vigorous campaign from June 20 to July 15 to expose the ''anti-farmer'' policies of the Jagan Mohan Reddy government starting with Kadapa zone comprising five parliamentary constituencies in the Rayalaseema region and gear them up for a protracted struggle.
Committees were being formed in the five zones spread across the State to spearhead the stir, he added. Stoutly opposing the YSR Congress Party government's decision to fix meters for farm pumpsets at the behest of the Union government, he said the decision was akin to ''hangman's noose for the farmers''. Metering of energy supplied to ryots to energise their pumpsets would pave the way for gradual withdrawal of the free power scheme, he feared.
It was unfortunate that the State government which had promised market intervention through the Rythu Bharosa Kendras had failed to ensure even the promised minimum support price to paddy growers in Nellore and elsewhere in the State. Millers through their network of agents ruled the roost, he alleged.
The drip irrigation scheme, the brainchild of former Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu had been neglected by the present government so also the supply of zinc, boron and gypsum to farmers free of cost in vogue during the then TDP regime. The party would also highlight the alleged delay in providing input subsidy to farmers who had suffered because of natural calamities, he added.
