WARANGAL: Chilli farmers who have been fighting for remunerative prices for their produce and dumping huge quantities of chilli bags at Enumamula market yard for the last few months, on Monday got support from Congress.
Party leaders, led by TPCC chief N Uttam Kumar Reddy, staged a protest at the market yard. However, they were stopped at the gate of the market yard office by the police.
Agitated over refusal to allow them to meet the market yard chairman and secretary, the Congress leaders held a sit-in in front of the gate. After repeated appeals when they refused to leave the premises, the police arrested them and took them to Hanamkonda police station.
Earlier, Uttam Kumar Reddy interacted with chilli farmers, where they poured out their woes and told him that the government was not helping them and that they were forced to sell their produce between `3,500 and `5,000 per quintal.
The farmers alleged that the traders have formed a syndicate and were purchasing at lower price causing huge loss to them. “Until we get `12,000 per quintal, we will not get back our cost of production. We want the government to help us out or else we will lose heavily,” a farmer from Bhupalpally told Uttam Kumar Reddy.
Expressing surprise over the attitude of the TRS government over farmers issues, the TPCC chief said that in the past whenever there was a steep fall in the prices of crops, the state government used to intervene and procure crops from the farmers at remunerative price and save them.
According to him, crop production had come down drastically ever since TRS took the reins of the state. The current crop production in the state is an indicator of how much attention the state government was giving to agriculture, he said. “The chief minister, ministers and party leaders are more busy in their party’s plenary and public meeting. They do not have time for farmers,” he alleged.
Criticising Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao for not doing much to help farmers, Uttam Kumar Reddy wanted to know why the chief minister was maintaining silence on farmers issue.