Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy had on Tuesday launched the
Raitu Chaitanya Yatra, a program through which he intends to educate the farmers and prepare them for the Kharif season.
The launch of this program proved to be the last straw for the farmers whose tolerance levels were being tested to the hilt by the long-standing issue of lack of storage space at the grain purchase centres across the state.
In the districts of Mahabubnagar and East Godavari, the irate farmers clashed with the officers who visited their villages as a part of the Raitu Chaitanya Yatra. The farmers got into heated arguments with those associated with the program.
The farmers demanded that such programs be conducted only after redressing the Minimum Support Price (MSP) issue. The farmers lamented that their hills of paddy grains that were spread out at the grain purchase centres, due to lack of space within the centres, were being drenched by rains, and that their chances of getting better prices for their grains were thus being affected.
The farmers also charged that neither the schemes proposed nor the subsidies promised were implemented by the government. They declared that they would not respond to the Raitu Chaitanya Yatra unless the MSP issue was sorted first.