TRS to intensify protest against Centre over paddy

Hyderabad, April 2:  The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) on Saturday announced a five-phase protest from April 4 against the Centre over its refusal to procure paddy from Telangana during the ongoing Rabi season.

TRS working president K.T. Rama Rao said the party would stage protests in all mandal headquarters on April 4. In the second phase, the TRS will organise 'rasta roko' on Mumbai, Nagpur, Bengaluru and Vijayawada national highways on April 7.

The next day, protests will be held in all 12,769 villages across the state. He called upon farmers to put up black flags atop their houses, take out protest rallies and burn effigies of the Central government.

Under the fifth phase, state ministers and public representatives will stage a protest in Delhi on April 11. The TRS MPs will also raise the issue in the Parliament.

KTR, as the TRS leader is popularly known, told reporters that despite repeated requests by the state government and the visit by a ministerial delegation to Delhi to meet Union Food Minister Piyush Goyal, the Centre refused to procure paddy from the state and was insisting on raw rice.

He said the state had been demanding that the Centre should procure the entire paddy as it is procuring from Punjab. "When you can have one nation one ration, why can't you have one nation one procurement," he asked.

The TRS leader slammed the BJP leaders for speaking in different tones in Delhi and Telangana. He recalled that last year in view of the Centre's refusal to procure parboiled rice, the TRS government had appealed to farmers not to grow paddy but the state BJP leaders provoked them and assured them that they will make the Centre procure every grain.

KTR said Central minister G. Kishan Reddy, who comes from Telangana, had declared that whether farmers grow raw rice or parboiled rice, the Centre would procure the entire stocks.

The TRS leader said responding to the state government's appeal, farmers have not cultivated paddy on 15 lakh acres during Rabi. They took up cultivation on 30 to 35 lakh acres, and it is now the responsibility of the Centre to buy the entire paddy, he added.