Date:23/12/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/12/23/stories/2007122353900500.htm

Andhra Pradesh

Yerrannaidu blames UPA for farm crisis

Staff Reporter

Promises waiver of coop. loans if TDP comes to power

Telugu Desam to continue agitation on ryots’ issue
‘Congress has no moral right to continue in power’

Kakinada: Blaming the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government for the crisis in agriculture sector, Telugu Desam Parliamentary Party leader K. Yerrannaidu has expressed the party’s resolve to keep the agitation for Minimum Support Price (MSP) for paddy and other crops going till the demand is conceded. He also promised waiver of all cooperative loans if the party comes to power again. He claimed that the State had the highest production of foodgrains during the TDP regime.

Dig at Manmohan

Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, Mr. Yerrannnaidu said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has no knowledge of agriculture and that’s the reason why he failed to take proper measures for alleviating the plight of farmers. The Prime Minister would have basic understanding of the farm sector on which 70 per cent of the population was dependent, only when he goes to the fields and sees himself how the farmers were struggling to sustain themselves. As the ruling coalition appeared to be non-committal on the welfare of farmers, the United National Progressive Alliance, led by its convener and TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu, took up the cause of farmers. The UNPA and TDP would not relent until the farmers’ concerns were addressed at the national level, as recommended by scientist M.S. Swaminathan, he said. The TDP leader said the Congress had lost the right to rule the State when the CAG exposed its complicity in financial irregularities in the execution of irrigation projects.