A Joint Action Committee of farmers’ associations in Telangana has demanded that the government release a white paper on the agreement on irrigation projects that was entered into with Maharashtra recently.
At a press conference here on Thursday, chairman of the Farmers’ JAC, former Justice B. Chandra Kumar, charged Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao with keeping all and sundry in the dark about the agreement and particularly about how and why the level of barrage across river Pranahita at Tummidihatti was brought down to 148 metres, instead of 152 metres as was contemplated earlier.
Mr. Chandra Kumar and other leaders, including Ravula Chandrasekhar Reddy (Telugu Desam Party), Pasya Padma (Communist Party of India), M. Raghunandan Rao (Bharatiya Janata Party) and P.L. Vishweshwar Rao (Lok Satta Party) questioned the way Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao and the TRS party was going gaga over the agreement and citing it as one that was ‘historic’.
They said the way the Telangana government and Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao had ‘succumbed’ to some kind of pressure and agreed to 148 metres clearly indicated that something was ‘fishy’. “It is obvious that something is wrong and it is a fact that it’s an injustice to people of Telangana. The Chief Minister owes an explanation to the people on this count,” they stated.
The leaders also condemned the manner in which Mr. Rao had threatened to book cases against people who criticised the agreement.
They wanted him to come out with the finer details of what exactly happened, what the dispute was with Maharashtra and how the TRS government thought they have resolved it.
