HYDERABAD: TPCC president A Revanth Reddy has called for a rally at 2 pm on December 27, to expose how BJP and TRS were “colluding to mislead” the farmers of Telangana. Interestingly, he has chosen Erravalli village of Jagdevpur mandal in Gajwel constituency, Siddipet, where Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s farmhouse is located.
Addressing the media on Friday, Revanth appealed to farmers and farmers’ organisations to actively participate in the meeting irrespective of their political affiliations.
Why no objections earlier?
He questioned the State government as to why it had not objected when the Centre had informed beforehand that it wouldn’t be procuring parboiled rice in Rabi season. The State Congress chief wondered what the ministerial delegation from Telangana had achieved by staying in New Delhi for the past six days.
The fact that the State government was not disclosing how much paddy was left to be procured in Kharif but asking the Centre to state in writing how much paddy it would procure was laughable, said Revanth.
‘KTR was shooed away’
“The Chief Minister went to Delhi but didn’t meet Union Minister Piyush Goyal. KTR was fed grass by Goyal and was sent back. TRS MPs ran away when Goyal raised the issue of 25,000 tonnes of rice missing from FCI godowns in Warangal. But they were protesting at Central Hall and posing as if they were fighting in Parliament,” Revanth quipped.
Wondering why none of the family members of the Chief Minister had taken part in the TRS’ ‘Chaavu Dappu’ protest in villages against the Centre, he questioned why Minister K Taraka Rama Rao and MP Santosh Kumar were not with the ministerial delegation in New Delhi.
“With a Rs 2 lakh crore annual budget, the State government can definitely afford to procure the entire paddy stock from farmers by spending Rs 10,000 crore. If they can’t, let them give that money to us. We will take care of the procurement through Kisan Congress, export it and return the money to the government,” Revanth said.