Paddy procurement issue: Telangana farmers dump paddy in front of BJP MP's residence in Nizamabad
India Today
Several agitated farmers in Telangana's Nizamabad staged protest and dumped paddy in front of BJP MP's residence over Centre's paddy procurement policy.
A day after Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao and ministers protested in Delhi over paddy procurement, agitated farmers in Nizamabad dumped paddy in front of the BJP leader's residence.
The farmers staged a protest outside BJP MP D Arvind over the Centre's paddy procurement policy. They alleged that Nizamabad MP was 'anti-farmer' for criticising KCR on the paddy issue.
Meanwhile, union government has released a fact sheet on the allegations of discrimination raised by Telangana government. According to Centre, Telangana is a Decentralized Procurement (DCP) state wherein paddy is procured by state government and its agencies and the resultant rice is kept by the state for its own consumption.
As per provisions, FCI has the option to specify the form of rice i.e. raw or parboiled to be delivered to it by surplus states depending upon the overall consumption/ demand of the form of rice in the country.
Procurement in Telangana in KMS 2015-16 was 15.79 LMT, which was increased to 94.54 LMT in 2020-21. The government also stated that Punjab is a non-DCP state for paddy procurement and the Centre is not procuring any parboiled rice from Punjab.
TRS government in Telangana has been demanding the Centre procure the entire parboiled rice from the state. However, the Centre has been saying it can procure only raw rice and not the parboiled ones which are not consumed largely in India.
KCR has claimed that while the Centre procures an entire marketable surplus of paddy and wheat in states like Punjab and Haryana it is not being done in Telangana.
