The Congress party has requested the Telangana and Central governments to come to the rescue of the farming community that has been facing nature’s fury in the form of excessive rain in the State, causing extensive damage to standing crops.
In the absence of insurance coverage to crops following a dispute between the State and Central governments over bearing the share of premium amount, the farmers were not in a position to get any compensation, senior legislator and former minister T. Jeevan Reddy said on Tuesday. Only the reimbursement of cultivation costs at ₹20,000 per acre could alone bring the farmers out of the present crisis as the prospects of crop production had gone down to one-third of normal/expected quantity.
Mr. Jeevan Reddy, who also addressed a letter to Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on the hand-holding needed by the farming community during the present crisis, requested the State government to conduct a field survey on the damage suffered by standing crops, including cotton, paddy, maize etc. without any delay as some farmers were taking up harvesting with the hope of getting at least something.
Further, he sought relaxations of fair average quality specifications for cotton procurement by the Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) so that some relief was provided to the farming community in distress. On maize, he said instead of blaming one another, the State and Central governments should come forward to procure maize at minimum support price of ₹1,850 per quintal as the Centre’s decision to allow imported maize with reduced duty had hit the market price to around ₹1,000 per quintal only.
Meanwhile, legislator T. Jayaprakash Reddy alias Jagga Reddy alleged that the State administration had completely given up on providing relief to rain/flood-hit people in Hyderabad and elsewhere in the State as they appeared to be more interested in conducting reviews on non-priority issues in the present context such as Dharani portal for registration of non-agricultural properties.
He pointed out that farmers had taken to large-scale cultivation of paddy and cotton on the advice of the government and it was the responsibility of the administration to procure the two crops by relaxing quality norms. He also criticised the government for offering ₹10,000, ₹50,000 and ₹1 lakh to people who had lost everything in floods in the city.
