‘Govt. failure to implement schemes to farm sector better than BRS pushing ryots into distress’

BRS criticizes Congress for failing to implement Rythu Declaration, leaving farmers without insurance claims and irrigation support.

HYDERABAD

The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) has alleged that the Congress government has badly failed in implementing its Warangal Rythu Declaration despite making the farming community believe that the party would do more than BRS, and even AICC leader Rahul Gandhi too assured that they would help the food producers at every step.

Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, former minister S. Niranjan Reddy and former MLA M. Anand said Rythu Bandhu, the investment support scheme, and Rythu Bima, life insurance cover to landholding farmers, were complimented by even the United Nations as best interventions to help the farm sector.

During the BRS rule, families of 1,18,197 farmers, who died due to various reasons, were given insurance claims of ₹5 lakh each after a premium of ₹6,122.65 crore was paid by the government. The families who lost their key earning members (farmers) were paid claims worth ₹5,909.85 crore at ₹5 lakh each. After change of government, the Congress dispensation did not pay ₹750 crore as the second instalment of the premium for the current year to the Life Insurance Corporation of India to discontinue the scheme.

As a result, the family members of about 7,000 farmers who died of various reasons, including 450 farmers who ended life forcibly due to distress, over the last one year did not get any insurance claim. Besides, failure of the government to provide water for irrigation had forced the farmers to abandon their standing crops at some places.

Once the conditions of withering crops was taken to the government’s notice by its agencies, Telangana Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Commission chairman M. Kodanda Reddy was told to make an appeal to farmers not to cultivate paddy this Rabi season. But, the farming community had taken to paddy cultivation in about 53.25 lakh acres this season, the BRS leaders said.

They appealed to the farming community not to resort to the extreme step and observe restraint to question and rap the government at an appropriate time.