Senior BJP leader and in-charge for Madhya Pradesh P. Muralidhar Rao on Tuesday blasted the TRS Government for “forcing the farmers to go for distress sale of paddy and benefit the brokers even while spreading disinformation about the Centre’s role in procurement”.
“This is being done with a pre-planned strategy to rake up the Telangana sentiment to cover up its own failures. The Modi Government at the Centre has never discriminated against TS and will not do so, therefore people of Telangana are not going to buy this current campaign of the TRS,” he said, at a press conference at the party office.
Mr. Rao said the agenda behind the TRS game plan is to “cosy up to the Opposition by deriding the Central Government and also shift S people’s attention from the government’s follies”. “We will go to people and farmers to expose the TRS Government’s duplicity. If Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao goes to Delhi, we will go to the villages,” he said.
In the last eight years, TS is in the second position in terms of paddy procurement by the Centre and then where is the proof to show that there is discrimination? Did the Centre not purchase paddy even when the production was more than the estimated amount in the last few years, he questioned.
If the Centre did not purchase the produce where did the TS Government sell the paddy or raw rice, can the TRS government reveal how much loss it had suffered if it has really purchased every single grain as was being tom-tommed? Did the Centre not pay for everything, he wondered aloud.
The BJP leader accused the TRS Government of resorting to “blackmail and threats” against the farmers to stop them from cultivating paddy without coming out with an alternative plan. There is also no progess in helping the rice mills upgrade technology or blending capacity to make rice barn oil or the fortified rice, he claimed.
The Centre has been reiterating that it will stick to the written agreements with the state government about the paddy procurement whereas it is KCR who has been shifting stands on the issue. “We are going to put all his previous announcements into the public domain. There is a dire need for TS to break free from the brokers mafia,” he declared.
