Minister for Agriculture S. Niranjan Reddy has termed the letter addressed by State BJP president Bandi Sanjay Kumar to Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on the payment of paddy procurement made in the recent rabi season as “an assassin paying homage to the victim”.
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Reacting to the letter, the Minister said that Mr. Sanjay should feel sorry for the Centre’s lack of cooperation in paddy procurement after trying to mislead farmers repeatedly that it was the Centre that would procure paddy from them and even pay for gunny sacks and stitching thread.
Instead of helping the Telangana government to mobilise funds, as it did in case of some other States, the Centre had created hurdles and denied the State from its plans to borrow money. In spite of that, the State government had procured 49.92 lakh tonnes of paddy produced in rabi worth ₹9,772.54 crore and made payments of ₹7,464.18 crore to farmers so far.
Meanwhile, the Minister inaugurated a call centre set up in the office of Rythu Bandhu Samiti here to clear doubts and queries of farmers on Rythu Bandhu, Rythu Bima, crop diversification and other information related to agriculture.
Later, at a review meeting on the availability of seed and fertilizer for kharif season, he stated that the government has plans to encourage cotton cultivation in 70 lakh acres and red gram in 15 lakh acres this season. The government was also ready to provide green manure seed required for 16 lakh acres to improve nutrients in the soil.