VIJAYAWADA: Terming Telugu Desam regime as a ‘dictatorial and anti-farmer’ rule, YSR Congress MLA Kolusu Parthasarathy said that N Chandrababu Naidu and his party members do not have any moral right to speak on issues concerning farmers, as they had abandoned and cheated them during their five-year term.
Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, the former minister said that Naidu has been issuing baseless statements. After almost 18 months of getting rejected by the public, Naidu is saying that he is still unaware of defeat and the public has made a judgemental error. He said that Naidu always takes the side of dalits, BCs and minorities when he is in opposition but when in power he dumps them, Parthasarathy said.
He criticised the former chief minister for making false accusations that the government had abandoned farmers. He said that Naidu presumed that agriculture sector was non-profitable and does not boost the economy, and thus completely neglected it.
He stated that Naidu has a history of ditching farmers, despite making an election promise to spend Rs 86,000 crore on waiving off crop loans. All that he had accomplished was to clear only Rs 12,000 crore of loans and never bothered to provide minimum remunerative price for the produce and purchased crops at a low price for Heritage and sold them at higher prices.
Parthasarathy stated that Jagan Mohan Reddy has been providing Rythu Bharosa of Rs 13,500 every year, established Rythu Bharosa centres in every village, and had even provided input subsidy for crop loss in the same season. The State government also purchased every single grain, despite the percentage of moisture or broken grains, to support the farming community, he said.
