Taking up cudgels against the TRS government for allegedly denying “tenant” and “podu” cultivators’ access to investment support under the Rythu Bandhu scheme, various farmers’ unions affiliated to the Left parties staged road blockades at six different places in the district as part of “Sadak Bandh” on Thursday.
Activists owing allegiance to the farmers’ wings of the CPI (M), the CPI and the CPI (ML-New Democracy) laid siege to the main road at Raparthi Nagar here, demanding extension of Rythu Bandhu to tenant and podu farmers, among other “real cultivators”, who are in dire need of investment support to tide over the agrarian crisis grappling them. Vehicular movement on the busy bypass road here was disrupted for about half an hour as the demonstrators blocked the road pressing for their charter of demands including provision of institutionalised credit, remunerative prices for farm produce and implementation of Prof M. S. Swaminathan committee’s recommendations.
CPI (M) district secretary Nunna Nageswara Rao, CPI district secretary Bagam Hemantha Rao and CPI (ML-ND) State Assistant Secretary Potu Ranga Rao led the agitation. The leaders of the Left parties slammed the TRS government for allegedly excluding the tenant and podu cultivators, who form sizeable number of actual tillers in the State, from the ambit of the investment support scheme, on “unjustified grounds.”
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They wanted the government to bring all the “real cultivators” under the purview of the scheme and take concrete steps to address the underlying causes behind agrarian crisis and farmers’ suicides with a realistic approach.
Amid sloganeering by the demonstrators, the police whisked away the leaders of the Left parties in vehicles and let them off a short while later. The “Sadak Bandh”, jointly called by the farmers’ unions, Left parties and various other mass organisations found its resonance in various parts of Khammam and Bhadradri-Kothagudem.