Ready to expose `bogus' Agri growth claims: Revanth Reddy accepts KTR's challenge

Hyderabad: Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President A Revanth Reddy accepted the challenge of MAUD Minister KTR for a debate and vowed to expose bogus agriculture growth claims of the TRS government.

Addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan on Tuesday, Revanth said he was ready for an open debate on what the Congress government did from 2004-2014 and how the TRS government brought agrarian crisis from 2014-2021.

He said he was ready to debate on how Congress-ruled states are doing better than the TRS government in farmers' welfare.

TPCC president said that the TRS government did nothing in the last seven years when compared to what Congress Government did for the farmers from 2004-2014. He said that the previous Congress government took up several irrigation projects under the Jala Yagnam programme.

"Pending works on projects like Nagarjuna Sagar and Jurala were completed while several new projects like Pranahita Chevella, Rajiv Sagar, Indra Sagar, and Palamuru Rangareddy were taken up. Several major, medium, and minor irrigation projects were completed and upgraded to bring lakhs of acres of land under cultivation," he said.

He said that the concept of free power for the agriculture sector was introduced by the Congress party. "As the then Energy Minister Shabbir Ali was instrumental in implementing 7-hour quality power for free for the agriculture sectors in the entire undivided Andhra Pradesh. Later, the duration of free power supply was increased to nine hours," he said.

TPCC Chief said that the Congress government provided subsidies on seeds and fertilizers, ensured input subsidy, and introduced Market Intervention Schemes for several crops including chili, turmeric, cotton, Lal Jowar, etc.

He said that the previous Congress-led UPA Government had waived off farm loans of nearly Rs 72,000 crore of 4.30 crore farmers across the country in 2008. "The then united Andhra Pradesh was the major beneficiary where loans of nearly Rs 13,154 crore of over one crore farmers were waived off in a single instance. Nearly 38 lakh farmers, who already repaid their loans, were given incentives of Rs 5,000 each to the tune of nearly Rs 1800 crore. The entire process of waiving off farm debts was completed within 100 days without any glitches," he said.

He said that the TRS government did not fulfill the promise of waiving off crop loans up to Rs 1 lakh. He said separate policies were framed by the Congress government to help the poultry sector.