HYDERABAD: Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Sunday, November 7, 2021, sought to expose the BJP’s political game plan in the State by explaining how the “Delhi BJP” keeps saying it would not procure Rabi rice from Telangana and the “silly BJP” in the State keeps ranting that it would force the State government to procure all the Rabi paddy and that farmers should not go in for alternative crops.
“The Centre says clearly that it would not procure Rabi rice... not even a kg. But the State president of BJP keeps on asking the farmers to go in for only paddy cultivation. I have all the correspondence between the State government and the Centre. They had said a clear no to Rabi rice in future.” The Chief Minister said that the State BJP president was only trying to further the party’s political interests by instigating the farmers to go in for paddy cultivation.
‘State BJP chief using issues for political gains’
“If the farmers cultivate paddy in Rabi and if the Centre does not buy the rice from it, then the State BJP chief would instigate farmers to sit in dharnas demanding that the TRS government should procure paddy from the farmers, get it converted into rice at rice mills and then give it for procurement by the FCI,” the Chief Minister said. Elaborating on the correspondence between the Centre and the State as well as the efforts he and his Cabinet colleagues had put in to force the Centre to procure from Telangana, he said that the Centre had taken in writing from the State that it would procure all the Rabi paddy of last year and that the State should not ask for procurement of future Rabi crops as it already had surplus stocks.
This was the reason why the State had been advocating that the farmers should go in for alternative crops but the BJP State president, who always shoots off with his mouth using objectionable language, instigating the farmers. “I am thinking of the interests of the farmers but the State BJP president wants to convert any issue into one that benefits him politically,” he said. The Chief Minister also said that FCI was set up with a clear objective of stocking food grains to ensure food security to the entire nation. “The FCI has large godowns built scientifically so that they could store food grains for years.
No State has such godowns and even if they had they could stock food grains only for a very short time. It is the Centre which can export good grains to other countries and no State including Telangana has that power. In these circumstances, it is the FCI and the Centre that a State looks to procure its paddy or rice and if FCI says it cannot procure, what could the states do,” he said. In Telangana, the farmers are raising paddy like never before since they have enough water for irrigation, adequate capital which is reaching them in the form Rythu Bandhu, round-the-clock power supply for using agriculture pumpsets and now they have grown to the level of feeding the nation.
In the last Rabi season, the agreement was for procurement of 50 lakh tonnes of rice but the FCI took only 24 lakh tonnes in the first instalment and 20 lakh tonnes in the second instalment. The State is still saddled with four lakh tonnes of rice of last Rabi season, he pointed out. When it came to Kharif, paddy was grown in an area of 64 lakh acres which yielded 1.7 lakh tonnes. If it is converted into rice, it would come to around 1.10 lakh tonnes.
Though there is no commitment yet on procurement of entire Kharif paddy, which yields a regular variety of rice unlike Rabi paddy that gives only parboiled rice, the State had decided to procure the entire 1.7 lakh tonnes of paddy in anticipation that the Centre would procure all the rice produced. As the Rabi season will be beginning now, the State is advising the farmers to go in for alternative crops since the Centre had already stated that it would not procure parboiled rice, the Chief Minister said.