As part of a State-wide agitation plan, the Communist Party of India (CPI), on Monday, launched the ‘Chalo Collectorate’ programme in Anantapur, demanding the State government to rescue the farmers who had lost their crops because of fake seeds, untimely rains and lack of a decent minimum support price.
The CPI State Secretary K. Ramakrishna and the party leaders D. Jagadeesh and C. Jaffer were arrested along with several others when they tried to barge into the district Collector’s office to give a representation to the Collector on the farmers’ issues. The party leaders and workers staged a dharna in front of the Collectorate’s main gate, but the police dispersed them and shifted the arrested leaders to the police stations. The arrested leaders were released on personal bonds later in the day.
Mr. Ramakrishna, speaking to the media, said that farmers in all the 26 districts in the State had lost a sizeable amount of crop due to excess rains and fake seeds, and 1,673 farmers had committed suicide since the YSRCP government came to power. Still, there was little response from the government, he said. The party will hold similar protest programmes at Kurnool on Tuesday and at Nandyal on Wednesday.
The CPI leaders carried damaged cotton, groundnut, sugarcane, pomegranate, paddy and turmeric plants to the Collector’s office. Onion and tomato yields, along with several horticulture crops, were affected in Kurnool and Anantapur districts, but the ruling party leaders, instead of going to the affected farmers’ houses to understand their problems, were holding ‘Gadapa Gadapaku Mana Prabhutvam’ as a ritual with no outcome, Mr. Ramakrishna pointed out.
