Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who the other day announced that the state government would not take up any purchase of agriculture commodities from the Rabi season in view of the Central laws, has changed his mind.
Apparently realising that the decision not to purchase paddy by the government will have serious impact on the party’s prospects in the by-elections to the Nagarjunasagar assembly seat, the TRS chief on Monday ordered purchase of paddy this season.
According to an official statement, KCR directed that the authorities make arrangements for procurement of paddy during the summer season through 6,408 centres in the villages all over the State.
The chief minister clarified that due to the resurgence of the Corona pandemic, it was decided, as was done last year, to procure paddy in the villages. A decision to this effect was taken at a high-level meeting held at Pragati Bhavan on Monday.
KCR instructed principal secretary (finance) Ramakrishna Rao to make all arrangements to give Rs 20,000 Crore bank guarantee by Tuesday evening.
He instructed chief secretary Somesh Kumar to conduct an emergency videoconference with all the collectors for the setting up of the procurement centres.
He asked agriculture minister Niranjan Reddy to monitor the setting up of the procurement centres and procurement of the paddy.
He also instructed the minister and the chief secretary to take all precautions so that farmers were not put to any difficult while the paddy is procured.
He said in 6,408 Procurement Centres, there are 2,131 IKP Centres, 3,964 PACS Centres and others are 313. The CM instructed that Minimum Support Price conditions should be implemented and ensured while farmers bring their Paddy to the Centres.
The CM wanted the farmers to ensure that the Paddy they are bringing in to the Centre should have not more than 17 per cent moisture. The farmers should ensure that the moisture percentage is less and they should follow conditions of the MSP.
The CM instructed the officials to keep the 20 Crore Gunny Bags ready at the Procurement Centres.
This summer season, paddy is cultivated in 52.76 Lakh acres, and it is expected that the yield would be 1.17 Crore Metric Tonnes of the coarse variety Paddy and 21 Lakh Metric Tonnes of the fine variety Paddy.
The CM instructed the CS to identify lands to be given on lease to the Central Ware Housing Corporation who are ready to construct additional Godowns to store the food grains.