Hyderabad, November 18th : , Demanding that the Centre improve rice procurement from Telangana, and protesting its policies and practices, Chief Minister K.Chandrasekhar Rao and his Cabinet colleagues, MPs, and state legislators started’maha dharna’ here Thursday. Rao claimed that Telangana’s farmers suffered because of Centre policies.He described the “maha-dharna” as the start of a fight to protect farmers’ rights.
KCR is the popularly-known chief minister.He stated that the movement would continue until the Centre changes its policies and procures rice from Telangana at a level with Punjab.
This is only the beginning.We will travel to Delhi if necessary.”We are prepared to take it all the way,” declared the Chief Minister as he launched the massive protest at Indira park in the center of Delhi.
He claimed that Centre policies had been detrimental to farmers in Telangana, at a point when these were moving along the path of success and contributing to country’s advancement.
He stated that the Centre was supporting farmers in north India, who had been requesting new laws for their farms.
The dharna was attended by KCR’s whole cabinet, MPs and members of Legislative Assembly, as well as other elected representatives, leaders and Telangana Rashtra Samithi officials (TRS).
It began at 11 AM and will go on until 2 PM.
Later, a delegation of TRS members will reach Raj Bhavan in order to make a representation to Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan.
KCR dismissed BJP’s accusations of staging protests despite the fact that they were in power, and recalled that Narendra Modi was Gujarat chief minister at the time.He sat in a 51-hour dharna.
According to the TRS chief, it is Narendra Modi’s responsibility to prevent a situation in which the chief minister of an state must sit on the dharna.
In less than one week, this is the second demonstration by TRS.On November 12, state ministers, MPs, and state legislators along with other leaders participated in the dharnas in every Assembly constituency.
KCR had written to Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India to ask him to give direction to the Food Corporation of India (FCI), to increase Telangana’s rice procurement target.
KCR requested that the FCI increase the target of procurement rice beyond 40 lakh tonnes during Kharif 2021-22, to 90 percent of what was done in Punjab.
Modi also asked the Chief Minister to order the FCI for the completion of procurement of 5 lakh tonnes remaining rice from Rabi 2020-21.
FCI was also requested to comply with the Telangana target to procure rice during the following Rabi season.
KCR stated that FCI had been following policies that were confusing both farmers and state governments.
He noted that FCI had not set a target for procurement for all of the year and that production is growing year after year, but that procurement isn’t keeping up.
These policies by FCI make it difficult for states to design appropriate cropping patterns and to explain them to farmers.Even though Telangana’s rice production was 55.7 million tonnes during Kharif 2020-21, procurement only reached 32.66 lakh tonnes.This is 59% of total production.
It was lower than the 78 percent procured during kharif 2019-20.The letter states that such wide variations in the procurement levels do not permit the state to apply a rational cropping system.
KCR stated that he met Piyush Goyal, the union minister for food distribution on September 25th and 26th to clarify these issues and set the correct target for procurement.I requested the immediate fixation of the annual procurement target.
He wrote that although it has been fifty days since my last meeting with the Hon’ble Minister, no decision on policy has been made and sent to him.
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