HYDERABAD

Civil Supplies and Irrigation Minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy accused the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leadership of spreading lies on the ongoing Rabi paddy procurement operations to mislead farmers and hide its own record of procurement failures.

In a sharp rebuttal to the allegations of BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao, Mr. Reddy said, “His (KTR’s) sole agenda is to create a politically manufactured chaos among farmers. But, it will backfire.”

“The Congress Government is executing the largest-ever paddy procurement operation in Telangana’s history despite severe manpower shortage, massive logistical challenges and an unprecedented scale of arrivals. While BRS is busy spreading confusion, Government is ensuring that every grain brought by farmers is procured and every rupee reaches farmers‘ accounts,” he said.

Rejecting KTR’s allegations, the minister said official figures had exposed the hollowness of the BRS campaign. By May 21, Telangana had already recorded 54.29 lakh tonnes of paddy arrivals and out of which 46.21 LT was procured, accounting for nearly 85% procurement of the arrivals so far. The procurement transactions of more than 6.32 lakh farmers had already been completed and ₹7,841 crore was credited to farmers’ bank accounts.

Taking a dig at the previous BRS regime, the minister said the Congress Government had already outperformed multiple Rabi procurement seasons handled by the previous government. He pointed out that during the BRS regime, procurement stood at only 26.78 LT in Rabi 2021-22 and 36.63 LT in Rabi 2022-23, whereas the Congress Government had already crossed 48.21 LT procurement this season with procurement operations still continuing.

“Those who failed farmers for years are now unable to digest the scale and transparency of the Congress Government’s farmer-first procurement model,” Mr. Uttam Reddy said.

Responding to the allegations of gunny bags shortage, the minister termed the them “completely fabricated and irresponsible”. He said the government had already positioned nearly 20 crore gunny bags across procurement centres and adequate stocks were available to handle the entire procurement process smoothly.

He stated that the government was conducting daily reviews, deploying more than 13,000 trucks and lorries every day and continuously monitoring logistics, lifting and transportation. Over 43 LT of paddy had already been shifted to rice mills, while additional stocks were being transported to storage facilities without interruption.

He also hit back at the attempts by the Opposition to politically exploit farmers’ deaths by linking them to procurement delays. “Using farmers for political drama is shameful and insensitive,” he said.