Suryapet: Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy on Sunday accused BRS chief Chandrashekar Rao of depriving the poor of fine quality rice during his tenure, even as he launched the supply of sanna biyyam to ration card holders in the state. He called the fine rice distribution a milestone in the evolution of food security.After launching the scheme by handing over fine rice packets to 10 beneficiaries at a public meeting organised at Rajiv Pranganam at Huzurnagar on Sunday evening, the Chief Minister said it was the greatest initiative undertaken by any government after the Rs 1.90 per kg rice launched by the Kotla Vijayabhaskara Reddy government in 1982 and Rs 2 per kg rice scheme of the N.T. Rama Rao government in 1983.The state government had decided on the scheme so that tribal and poor families could consume fine cooked rice, Revanth Reddy told a public meeting, which was attended by over 40,000 people in Huzurnagar.“The BRS government hoarded Rs 21,000 crore worth paddy with rice millers,” Revanth Reddy said. Rice millers during the BRS rule became richer by black marketing PDS rice. They procured it at Rs 10 a kg, re-milled it as fine-quality rice and sold it at Rs 30 a kg during the BRS tenure, the Chief Minister said.Revanth Reddy recalled that Chandrashekar Rao had cautioned the farmers that cultivation of paddy was a suicidal act and had announced that the BRS government would not purchse paddy from them.However, Rao himself took up the cultivation of paddy in 1,000 acres in his Erravelli farmhouse, Revanth Reddy said. While Kaveri Seeds purchased the paddy at Rs 4,500 per quintal from Rao’s farmhouse, farmers across the state struggled to get Rs 2,000 per quintal, he added.The Congress government, Revanth Reddy said, would purchase all the paddy that the farmers cultivated, and would pay a Rs 500 bonus per quintal for fine variety paddy in addition to the minimum support price (MSP).The Chief Minister said the cultivation of fine varieties of paddy had increased after the Congress government announced the bonus. In the erstwhile Nalgonda district alone, farmers cultivated premium varieties in eight lakh out of 12 lakh acres, making them the biggest beneficiaries in the state.He also alleged that Rao had intentionally delayed the SLBC project because of his dislike for the farmers of Nalgonda district — a bastion of Congress. The Chief Minister said that even if the BRS government had dug one km of the tunnel a year, it could have completed the project as work on 34 km was already done.Recalling the work of the Congress governments for the welfare of the poor, Revanth Reddy said Congress leader Sonia Gandhi played a key role in bringing the National Food Security Act, 2013, while it was former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who laid the seeds for the PDS.He recalled that Indira Gandhi had brought in the Land Ceiling Act and distributed 25 lakh acres of land to the poor. “Because of her work, many people in tribal hamlets and interior villages used to keep Indira Gandhi’s photo along with the photos of Gods and worship her for her great help.”Even when Telugu Desam founder N.T. Rama Rao had launched a Rs 2 a kg rice scheme in 1983, Revanth Reddy said Congress leader Jana Reddy played a key role in it.Stating that the people of Nalgonda had a history of fighting for land, food and liberation, he felt happy that he was launching the scheme from the land that showed such spirit. Stating that the fine rice supply to the poor was not an easy scheme, he felt that no successor government would dare to cancel it.
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