Telangana BJP president and MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar on Tuesday demanded that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao own up responsibility for the suicide of five farmers and also apologise to the farming community for causing them distress due to his directive to go for crops other than paddy in the next season.
“Mr. Rao has caused so much heartburn to the scared farmers with this latest directive that they are resorting to the extreme step. Why is he reluctant to implement the Centre’s farm insurance programme to help the farmers in distress? People should question the TRS leaders about this,” he said, during a public meeting in Medak on the 18th day of ‘Praja Sangrama Yatra’.
The plight of the farmers in the district and throughout his tour has caused much anguish to him, he claimed and charged the government of being apathetic to the various problems being faced by them. “The Chief Minister did not even bother to meet the Union Minister of State for Agriculture Sobha Karandjale when she wanted to discuss farmers’ issues, how can they say she praised the government?” he asked.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has assured to help TS, Mr. Rao has been carrying a disinformation campaign against the Centre, he alleged and claimed that the government has no idea about what to do with the bumper harvests due to the copious rains. His ongoing programme was an effort to understand the people’s woes, he said.
Later, addressing a press conference, Mr. Sanjay Kumar criticised Mr. Rao for not commemorating the ‘Sakala Januma Samme’ taken up during the agitation for separate State when people from all walks of life joined the protest. “He did not utter a single word about the mass strike on the 10th anniversary. The contribution of employees and others towards the success of the agitation has been forgotten even as the first family had benefited the most,” he claimed.
The government has stopped issuing job notifications, recruitments, promotions or transfers with the the promised pay hike also kept on the back burner. Particularly raising TSRTC plight, he charged the government of having utilised hundreds of crores belonging to the corporation and trying to sell off the properties. The BJP chief said he was ready to resign from his post if Mr. Rao too did the same for having failed to fulfil any of the election eve promises to the people. Senior BJP leaders Babu Mohan, M. Raghunandan Rao and others were present.
