Revanth accepts KTR’s challenge on agri growth

PCC chief asks Minister to choose the venue, date and time

January 11, 2022 09:18 pm | Updated 09:18 pm IST - HYDERABAD

Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee chief and Malkajgiri MP A. Revanth Reddy, former minister Mohammed Ali Shabbir addressing a media conference at Gandhi Bhavan in Hyderabad on Tuesday.

Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee chief and Malkajgiri MP A. Revanth Reddy, former minister Mohammed Ali Shabbir addressing a media conference at Gandhi Bhavan in Hyderabad on Tuesday.

Telangana Congress committee president A. Revanth Reddy said he was accepting the challenge of Municipal Administration Minister K.T. Rama Rao on agriculture growth in Telangana, and suggested him to choose the venue, date and time while appealing to him not to go back on the challenge thrown by him.

At a press conference here, he described Mr. Rao’s claims on agriculture growth as bogus and said he would prove what the Congress contributed from 2004 to 2014 and how the TRS created agrarian crisis since 2014. “I will also compare how much better present Congress governments in other States are doing on the agriculture front. I will take a delegation of TRS ministers to Congress-ruled States to prove my claim,” he said.

The TPCC chief, who was accompanied by senior leaders Mohammed Ali Shabbir, Balram Naik, Mallu Ravi, Anvesh Reddy and others, said free power, farm loan waiver, completion of pending projects while starting new projects, ensuring input subsidy to farmers who lose crops due to vagaries of weather, support price to all the crops and increasing the MSP of paddy from ₹ 450 to ₹ 1,060 were some of the achievements that he wanted to bring to the notice of the TRS that has been claiming that the Congress did nothing.

Quoting government figures of over 75,000 farmers dying from 2014 to 2018, he said it should also reveal how many died since 2018. Most of the farmers who died were aged between 18 and 58 years, he said.

Mr. Revanth Reddy recalled that the Congress-led UPA government had waived off farm loans of nearly ₹ 72,000 crore of 4.30 crore farmers across the country and the then united Andhra Pradesh was the major beneficiary, where loans of nearly ₹ 13,154 crore of over one crore farmers were waived off in a single instance.

Nearly 38 lakh farmers, who already repaid their loans, were given incentives of ₹ 5,000 each to the tune of nearly ₹ 1,800 crore. The entire process of waiving off farm debts was completed within 100 days without any glitches. “Its been three years and TRS is yet to fulfil its farm loan waiver promise.”

He said Congress government issued GO Ms 421 on June 1, 2004, to provide financial assistance up to ₹ 2 lakh to the families of farmers who committed suicide besides extending other assistance to the affected families. If Mr. Rama Rao had claimed that the TRS government spent ₹ 2.71 lakh crore on agriculture sector in the last seven years, which include ₹ 1.16 lakh crore on irrigation projects, ₹ 50,000 crore towards Rythu Bandhu and ₹ 3,535 crore to insurance companies, why are they shying away from procuring the agriculture produce, the PCC asked.

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