KCR to lead TRS ministers to Delhi to turn up heat on Centre over paddy procurement

This decision was taken by the CM after he held a three-hour-long meeting with senior ministers at his farmhouse at Erravalli Saturday. The move to launch the agitation and put the onus of paddy glut in the state on the Centre comes nine days after the BJP won four out of the five state Assembly elections.

After the Monday meeting in Hyderabad, a delegation of ministers led by CM Rao will leave for New Delhi on the same day to meet the Union ministers and even the Prime Minister to press for the Centre’s procurement of paddy from Telangana.

Sources said that the TRS dispensation is worried about resentment among lakhs of paddy farmers over the issue. The TRS MPs in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha will stage protests in Parliament in line with the party’s agitation in Telangana. The CM said the Centre was procuring 100 per cent of paddy from Punjab, adding that the TRS’s agitation will continue to demand 100 per cent paddy procurement by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) from Telangana as well.

In today’s meeting, KCR said it is a “life and death issue” for the Telangana farmers and that the TRS was gearing up to launch an “intense struggle” on the issue, even as he asked the ministers to join the struggle.

During the winter session of Parliament last year, the TRS MPs entered the Well of the two Houses, demanding that the Centre procure paddy from Telangana and clarify how much paddy the FCI will procure every year from the state in Kharif and Rabi seasons. It is another matter that till that session the TRS had adopted a neutral stance in Parliament since Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014.

On November 17 last year, the CM had written to the PM, complaining that certain FCI policies were “confusing” and were creating “difficulties” for the states to plan cropping patterns and explain it to farmers. KCR criticised the FCI policy not to fix the procurement target for the entire year and the policy not to increase procurement despite the increase in production every year.

KCR’s agitational move comes at a time when the Telangana Congress is also planning to hold a public meeting, called “Mana Ooru, Mana Poru (our town, our fight)”, at Yellareddy Sunday to “expose the anti-farmer policies of TRS government”.