Hyderabad, May 5 (RAHNUMA): In view of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Karimnagar, Deputy Chief Minister Bhatti Vikramarka urged that the Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Pranahita-Chevella project, which was designed during the Congress government in the undivided Andhra Pradesh, be immediately declared a national project.
Bhatti Vikramarka, along with Ministers Duddilla Sridhar Babu, Tummala Nageshwar Rao, and Ponnam Prabhakar, performed the ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of a compressed biogas plant set up by Biostratum Technologies Private Limited at Pantalugari Thota in Gambhiraopet village of Sircilla district on Tuesday.
He reminded that, as per the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, the then Central government had promised to grant national status to one major irrigation project in Telangana, and said that the present government had a responsibility to fulfill that promise.
The Deputy Chief Minister said that while the BJP government, which came to power in 2014, granted national project status to the Polavaram project in Andhra Pradesh, not giving the same status to even one project in Telangana is proof of discrimination against the state.
Bhatti stated that the Telangana government purchases every crop grown by farmers at the Minimum Support Price (MSP) fixed by the Centre. However, he criticised the Centre for creating hurdles in lifting the grain procured by the state and delaying the release of funds, calling it a betrayal of farmers.
He urged the Centre not to avoid responsibility by announcing MSP only for a few crops and ignoring the rest, and demanded that the Centre procure every grain collected by the state and release funds in time.
Highlighting a new revolution in agriculture, Bhatti Vikramarka said the Congress government is putting into practice the idea of producing biogas using paddy straw as a raw material.
He also called on farmers to adopt crop diversification to make agriculture more profitable and said that financial conditions would improve only when farmers reduce dependence on paddy and shift toward profitable crops such as horticultural crops, millets, and oil palm.
