Hyderabad: Ahead of general elections, agriculture minister Tummala Nageswara Rao has shot off a letter to the Centre seeking establishment of the proposed turmeric board in Nizamabad.
In a two-page letter, Tummala stated that the gazette notification on setting up turmeric board issued by the Centre on October 2023, did not specify the location and budget proposals for the board and therefore it was pertinent to fulfil the long-standing demand of turmeric farmers of the state that a board be set up in Nizamabad.
The demand of a turmeric board played a major role in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections for the Nizamabad seat, where over 150 farmers had filed nominations as independents seeking setting up of the board and ultimately resulted in the electoral defeat of BRS candidate Kavitha.
During the poll campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the establishment of the turmeric board. “The gazette notification given last year only mentioned about committee members, but nothing else, and if a board is established in Nizamabad, it will come a long way to promote export of valued-added turmeric products,” the minister said.
He stated that in 2019- 20, 1.38 lakh acres was under cultivation of the spice with a productivity of 3.25 lakh metric tones and it dropped to 56,174 acres in 2022- 23 and productivity too dropped to 1.73 lakh metric tones.“In the current year, the extent further came down by 34,978 acres. In this context, it is imperative to set up a turmeric board,” he said.
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