Telangana Congress Slams KCR On "Agrarian Crisis"

After slamming the State government for postponing the Monsoon Session of the Telangana Legislature recently, Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President N Uttam Kumar Reddy on Sunday demanded that the government convene an emergency session of Legislature to discuss on the ongoing "agrarian crisis".

Addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan, Reddy spoke on some of the key issues the Congress desired to discuss in case an emergency session is conducted.

Speaking on the Telangana's "agrarian crisis", the Congress leader alleged that the State government had neglected the agriculture sector and the farmers.

He said that the preliminary report prepared by the KCR-led government on the damages incurred by the agriculture sector due to the recent floods was factually incorrect.

As per government estimates in the report, crops growing on 4,45,792 acres of land, including soybean (78,000 hectares); cotton (39,000 ha); paddy (31,800 ha); maize (9,400 ha); bajra (5,400 ha) and chilli (8,000 ha), were destroyed during the recent floods. These estimates, Reddy claimed, were untrue and that the damage was much higher. However, the TPCC chief did not provide any counter-estimates in support of his claim.

He said that the government should compensate Rs. 10,000 per acre for paddy, maize and wheat crops. He also said that Rs. 20,000 per acre should be paid for the chilly, cotton and soybean farmers as compensation, along with Rs. 35,000 per acre for the 'toor' and 'moong dal' farmers.

Slamming the CM for expressing his satisfaction over the heavy rainfall, the Congress leader said that farmers of the State had lost four consecutive crops due to the floods that followed the rainfall.

The TPCC chief also spoke about the government's "diversion" of the funds allocated by the Centre towards the input subsidy for farmers, and claimed that Rs. 720 crores of the funds were re-allocated to other projects.

Speaking on the recent crop loan waivers released for farmers, Reddy complained that the government Rs. 4,000 crores of the third installment of the loan waiver had not been released yet.

Speaking further on this, he quipped, "KCR has enough money to pay off the contractors of Mission Bhagiratha and Mission Kakatiya, while simultaneously drawing kickbacks, but not enough to forgive the pending loans or the fee reimbursement scheme."