Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has said that he had never come across a Central government as the present one led by the BJP and that he will never see one like this in future.
His words came at a post-Cabinet media conference in the context of Centre’s refusal to purchase paddy produced in the State in the current rabi and its failure to commit itself to the quantity that it proposed to lift in the recent kharif.
He warned that the Centre was bent on seeing farmers in the State doomed for its political gains. This was because it was unable to digest highest production of paddy in the country here which touched a new record of 141 lakh tonnes last year.
The BJP wanted to push farmers back to poverty after they started prospering in separate Telangana due to welfare measures of the State government. If the trend continued, it posed a grave threat to social eco-system of the country to meet the divisive politics of BJP. The State government will fight it going to any extent. “Drive this government out, if the country has to prosper,” he appealed to intellectuals.
He said the country’s food security was the statutory responsibility of the Centre by building up adequate buffer stocks through procurement and releasing them for public distribution. But, the government shed the responsibility and resorted to anti-farmer and anti-poor policies which was manifest in the three farm laws that were repealed in Lok Sabha on Monday. The Centre had lakhs of crores of budget for the purpose but behaved as a “kirana shop” owner looking at profit and loss.
He traced the growth of agriculture and rural economy in the State to the huge strides taken by the government in irrigation project, power and improvement of groundwater table. But, it was an eye sore to BJP leaders.
Mr. Rao cited a letter of Union Minister of Power R.K. Singh asking the State government to support the new power laws. The laws were an attempt to water down the progress of States on power front in the name of reforms. The Centre will want to fix meters at all borewells if the laws were enacted. The borrowing limits of State governments would be scuttled in the new laws. Next, the Centre will want to enjoy monopoly over the sector and scrap the 24-hour free power in the State. Therefore, the State government will not support them.
