HYDERABAD: Asking the BJP leadership not to beat around the bush on the paddy procurement issue, Agriculture Minister S Niranjan Reddy asked Union Minister G Kishan Reddy to answer whether the Centre would procure paddy for the upcoming Rabi season or not. Responding to Kishan Reddy’s statement that the Centre would procure raw rice in a phased manner on Tuesday, Niranjan Reddy said that even farmers knew that growing raw rice in Rabi would result in 40-50 per cent grains becoming broken rice, when milled after March.
Regarding the State government agreeing not to send any more parboiled rice as per a condition laid down by the Centre for procuring an additional 20 lakh tonnes of parboiled rice from last Rabi season, the Minister said it was not a voluntary commitment made by the State, but the result of a desperate situation.
Reddy said the Centre was not only delaying phased payment to the State for procuring paddy by 5-6 months, but was also not paying for the accumulated interest on debt, which was being borne by the State to pay the banks from where money was being mobilised to pay farmers on time.
Terming it a failure on part of the Centre for first encouraging procurement of parboiled rice and then abruptly asking the State to stop procurement without having a solution for the switch-over, he said procurement was the responsibility and constitutional obligation of the Centre, and not a charity.
Referring to a video of Union Minister Nitin Gadkari where the latter stated that the country had the capacity to feed the world, he questioned what was stopping the Centre from thinking of innovative ways to do the same.
Referring to his interaction with Union Minister of Consumer Affairs Piyush Goyal, where the latter had himself asked the State government to encourage alternative crops as the Centre would not procure parboiled rice anymore, he questioned why BJP State president Bandi Sanjay was misguiding the farmers by asking them to grow paddy in Rabi.