YSR Congress president Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy on Saturday began his two-day hunger strike (Rythu Deeksha) on the issue of farm loan waiver in this delta town of West Godavari district.
He vowed to stand by farmers and self-help group women and fight it out until the government extended the waiver in full.
Addressing the gathering, he criticised Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu for his ‘politics of deception’ and said the Chief Minister had misled farmers and SHG women promising to implement loan waiver in full, but revealed his true colours soon after coming to power.
The case of farmers and women from West Godavari district with whose support the Telugu Desam Party managed to win all the Lok Sabha and Assembly seats was an example of Mr. Naidu’s rank opportunism, the YSRC chief said.
Mr. Jaganmohan Reddy said the government diluted the loan waiver scheme by making it more cumbersome and bringing down the total volume of relief to be extended to the debt-ridden farmers.
The YSRC chief, after his brief address, had a one-to-one interaction with farmer representatives and SHG women.
Janaki, an SHG woman from Chintalapudi area said she had taken Rs. 1 lakh as loan from her group. While she was waiting for relief, the loan amount as going up with accumulation of interest, she said.
She claimed that her husband, a farmer who had borrowed from commercial banks, was also facing the same problem.
YSRC former MLA Karumuri Nageswara Rao said the government had failed to address the acute shortage of fertilizer and remained a mute spectator even as farmers were purchasing stocks at higher rates in the black market. YSRC MLC Meka Seshubabu said West Godavari district drew blank in terms of development even after it gave the TDP a handsome majority in the general elections.
