BRS leader Errabelli Dayakar Rao speaking to the media in Hyderabad on Saturday, as Singireddy Niranjan Reddy and Methuku Anand look on.
The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) has accused the Congress of betraying farmers after coming to power in the State, as they had “promised all sorts of benefits to them before the Assembly elections and now deceiving them”.
Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, former ministers Singireddy Niranjan Reddy and Errabelli Dayakar Rao said that the Congress Government had already seen three farm seasons – harvesting of the last Kharif, last Rabi and present Kharif – but had failed to implement even one of the election promises made to farmers. Disbursement of Rythu Bharosa at ₹15,000 per acre or ₹7,500 per acre per season by now would have helped farmers meet input costs.
However, the government had announced setting up a Cabinet sub-committee on Friday on Rythu Bharosa to formulate guidelines for the eligibility of farmers to avail the benefit and the panel had been given the deadline of July 15 for coming up with its recommendations. Sowing of several crops would be completed by then and only paddy transplantation would be in progress.
They mentioned that the State Government has all the required data of farmers with cultivable area divided into clusters of 5,000 acres with each cluster managed by an agriculture officer. The previous BRS Government had disbursed ₹72,000 crore to about 68.9 lakh farmers a season covering about 1.52 crore acres of land.
Stating that identifying the beneficiary with all data available was routine work they said the number of farmers having over 25 acres of landholding was only 6,500 in the State. Similarly, the farmers having landholding up to 5 acres each was 92% of the total and no bank would give more than ₹one lakh credit to any farmer having 5 acres landholding.
The BRS leaders demanded that the government make public the details of the number of farmers having outstanding debt of ₹2 lakh each. They criticised the government’s efforts to publicise as if the loan waiver was already completed in the State, though the fact remained that the promise made to implement on December 9 last itself had been taken up for discussion in the Cabinet only six months after that.
