HYDERABAD: BJP MP Dharmapuri Arvind has said that he would approach Union Minister for Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal and see that a defamation suit is filed against State IT Minister KT Rama Rao. This is in relation to the ruling TRS’ statements that Goyal had asked TRS ministers during a meeting in New Delhi, to get the people of Telangana used to consuming broken rice.
Addressing the media in New Delhi on Sunday, Arvind alleged that the motive behind Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s conflict with the Centre was the State government’s reluctance to shell out Rs 600 crore to Rs 1,000 crore. This would have been the maximum additional burden on it for procuring parboiled rice.
Arvind said that farmers had grasped that the CM’s claim of buying every grain of paddy since 2014 was a sheer lie. It was the Centre which has been procuring paddy, which has gone up from 24 lakh tonne in 2014, to 141 lakh tonne last year, stated the BJP MP.
“Instead of taking care of administration, CM KCR is resorting to agitation against the Centre just to cover up his failures,” he said. The MP went ahead to term Rama Rao and the CM “silly fellows and notorious rogues” who had destroyed Telangana’s economy.
Playing a video of the Chief Minister from March 7, 2020, where the latter encouraged farmers to cultivate paddy in one crore acres on the floor of the Assembly, he questioned why the State government couldn’t prepare a policy accordingly.
Meanwhile, BJP State president B Sanjay Kumar expressed confidence that his Praja Sangrama Yatra scheduled to resume from April 14, would end the “dynastic, corrupt and autocratic rule of TRS”.