The Telangana State Association (TRS) government on Monday set up a platform in New Delhi to intensify the fight against the Center for demanding the government to buy paddy produced during the Rabi season. Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) and BKU leader Rakesh Tikait also joined the protest at the Telangana Bhavan in the national capital.
Ministers, MPs, MLAs, MLCs and other people’s representatives are also participating in the ‘Mahadharna’. KCR’s son Katie Rama Rao was seen sitting in a Telangana building protesting against the ‘discriminatory’ rice procurement policy.
TRS has put up hoardings in the national capital so that the country should have a paddy procurement policy, party sources said. Accusing the BJP-led NDA government of discriminating against Telangana, the TRS has staged multiple protests, including roadblocks, for almost a week.
The TRS protest came amid a row and war of words between the TRS and the BJP over paddy procurement in the state. While the TRS government is demanding procurement of paddy from the Center, the Center has said that they will buy raw rice.
The Telangana government had said in writing that it would supply raw rice to the Food Corporation of India (FCI), not cooked rice, Union Food Minister Piyush Goyal had recently said. BJP MLA Raja Singh recently said that the state government should take steps to procure paddy from farmers to supply raw rice, alleging that TRS is making a drama in the name of procuring paddy to divert public attention from the recent power price hike. To the center as per the agreement.
Meanwhile, state BJP president and MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar on Saturday alleged that the TRS government’s “politicizing paddy procurement” hinted at a large-scale conspiracy to extort hundreds of crores of rupees from middlemen and divert farmers’ anger to the Center. In a letter to the state’s farming community, Sanjay Kumar alleged that by closing paddy collection centers during the Rabi season, the Telangana government was creating an unavoidable situation for farmers to sell their produce to middlemen at a much lower rate than the MSP. (MSP).
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