Former BJP MLA N V S S Prabakhar today said that he would take up the rather contentious issue of the establishment of a turmeric board in Telangana's Nizamabad district with the BJP-led Centre.
Speaking to the media on the issue, he said that though the Spices Board had been successful in fetching remunerative prices for the turmeric grown in the state, he would broach the matter soon.
Targeting the Congress, Prabhakar alleged that the party's MPs had raised the issue of the turmeric board in the Lok Sabha to please the TRS and party MLC K Kavitha.
The leader also alleged that the TRS, the Congress and the MIM had a "secret understanding" with Y S Sharmila, regarding her plans to
launch her own political party in the state next month, and that Kavitha was the one who had secured permission for Sharmila's public meeting in Khammam for the launch.
He took the chance to flay Sharmila for her father's (former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy) "failure" to set up the board in undivided AP during his rule.
"Did YSR ever raise the issue during his term? I think the matter has always been ignored even though YSR's colleagues from Nizamabad had repeatedly urged him to take up the issue with the then-Centre," Prabhakar charged.
The leader's defensive stance is perhaps the result of all the flak that the Centre has been drawing over the establishment of the turmeric board.
Just recently, TPCC head and MP N Uttam Kumar Reddy had
lambasted the Centre for not fulfilling its promise of setting up a separate turmeric board in Telangana's Nizamabad district.