KURNOOL: Highlighting his demand that farmers be allowed to sell their produce at any place where they could get a remunerative price, Lok Satta president Jayaprakash Narayan on Sunday took out a padayatra to Gilka Sugurcamp in Karnataka and publicly auctioned the rice produced by AP farmers at a record price, thereby defying the state government regulations against doing so.
A Ramalakshmi of Bengaluru bought the rice at a whopping Rs 1 lakh for five quintals in the auction. Though the high price realised was due to some keen contest during the bidding, the normal price of the rice at Emmiganur in AP is about `2,100 per quintal as against `2,400 in Karnataka.
Jayaprakash, who went to Gilka Sugurcamp on foot from Emmiganur, said they had just made a beginning and soon they would go to Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu and sell the agricultural produce belonging to farmers from Adilabad, Srikakulam and Chittoor areas respectively. He even dared the government to try and stop him. The government should either pay a remunerative price to the farmer or abolish restrictions on export of agricultural produce, he said.