It was no-holds-barred attack by the BJP Telangana State unit against the TRS government for the chilli farmers’ woes just a day after the Centre’s announcement of support procurement price.
Stung by criticism against the Centre, BJP floor leader G. Kishan Reddy on Thursday gave a new angle to the chilli procurement crisis and said that the focus on making the TRS party plenary a success in Warangal at any cost affected the procurement.
At a press conference here, he claimed that the TRS leaders and officials had commandeered vehicles including tractors of farmers for the meeting and had even shut down the chilli yard for a few days. “And when farmers came in hoards a day or two later, the dealers formed into a cartel offering ridiculously low procurement rate,” he alleged.
The TRS was in the “stranglehold of middlemen” and to cover up its own “inefficient” handling of the situation, it was shifting the blame onto the Central government. Mr. Reddy demanded to immediately release the arrested tribal farmers and withdraw the cases in the Khammam incident. He also sought to know if any bonus would be declared to the farmers over and above the Centre’s offer of ₹6,000 a quintal for chilli.
Harish Rao flayed
Later, senior BJP leader N. Indrasena Reddy blasted Irrigation and Marketing Minister T. Harish Rao for his ‘doublespeak’ of appealing to the Centre to help in chilli procurement, giving credit to its MPs and later criticising the Centre for the support declared under the market intervention scheme.
He wondered why the ‘financially surplus’ TS was unable to spend ₹200 crore for procuring the chilli through Markfed as it was done in the past and recently for red gram.
