Minister for Agriculture S. Niranjan Reddy has expressed disappointment over the Union Budget allocations made to the agriculture sector, stating that the measures announced were lukewarm and insufficient towards the Centre’s plans to double the farmers income in the next two years.
In his reaction to the Union Budget, Mr. Reddy said on Saturday that the State government had been for long demanding linking Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to agriculture to overcome the severe labour crisis faced by the sector as also to provide some relief to the farming community in terms of expenditure. However, the Centre has announced that it would be linked only for raising fodder cultivation.
Similarly, there was no clarity on support to formation of crop colonies and establishing food processing units to help farmers get remunerative price to their produce, the minister said. Although the Budget speech had a mention of support for one crop colony for every district, there was no clarity on the number of districts and States and also the quantum of support.
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Further, Mr. Reddy said lack of any support in the form of national project status or in any other form to either one of the two major irrigation projects taken up by the Telangana government – Kaleshwaram and Palamuru-Rangareddy – aimed at irrigating over 70 lakh acres was also highly disappointing.