TRS misleading farmers over procurement: Piyush Goyal

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 1

Union Food and Civil Supplies Minister Piyush Goyal today attacked the TRS in the Rajya Sabha over paddy procurement and asked the state government to stop misleading farmers and instead it should fulfil its responsibility towards the farming community.

The minister, while responding to a supplementary question asked by TRS member K Keshav Rao, also stressed that the Centre had always been buying raw rice from Telangana as it did from Punjab.

Goyal further said the TRS government in Telangana had given in writing that it would not supply parboiled rice, but raw rice to the Food Corporation of India.

The FCI has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with all states and asked them to procure parboiled rice as per local demand and the surplus grain be supplied raw to the Central pool, the minister added.

Goyal said the Telangana Chief Minister has, however, recently written to the Centre and requested for paddy procurement in his state to be undertaken like in Punjab.

“We have said we procure rice from Telangana as we do in Punjab. Rice that we get from Punjab is as per the MoU and that grain can be sold and distributed across the country,” he said, adding that the Centre couldn’t take such a variety of rice which is not largely consumed.

He reiterated that the FCI had been taking raw rice and not paddy from the states for the last many years. “Time and again they (Telangana government) are trying to mislead, especially through MPs. It is baseless, incorrect and far from the truth,” Goyal said.

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