Hyderabad: Thousands of farmers are expected to turn up in Warangal district of Telangana on Thursday to attend 16th anniversary celebrations of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), in what is being seen as a massive mobilisation of the farming community by the party that came to power in 2014.
Over the last few weeks in Warangal district, scores of workers have been laying roads, building temporary parking spaces and erecting ramps ahead of the event.
While the party’s ‘foundation day’ is celebrated every two years, what sets this one apart is the scale of it.
The event is expected to see a turnout of 1.5 to 2 million people, more of half of whom would be farmers, said TRS functionaries. Chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao will address the crowd.
The event comes just five days after the state government announced a financial assistance scheme wherein farmers would be given Rs4,000 per acre for cultivation of kharif and rabi crops separately as input investment.
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The meeting will help the ruling party inform farmers about what the state government is doing for them, said Palla Rajeshwar Reddy, the member of legislative assembly from Warangal.
“The party will discuss all the measures it took after it came to power. The government is supplying nine hours of continuous power to farmers every day, among other promises it made. The meeting will be more like a progress report of the state government with regard to farmers. The chief minister will talk in detail about everything,” he added.
“We are familiar with conducting meetings like this and the TRS has mobilised huge crowds even when it was not in power. This meeting is dedicated solely to farmers,” Taduri Srinivas Prajapati, senior TRS leader and chairman of the Most Backward Classes Development Corporation (MBC) told Mint from Warangal.
Prajapati claimed that the earlier state governments of the united Andhra Pradesh had said that the agricultural sector is not profitable and hence did not invest in it. The Rs4,000 scheme was one of the steps taken by the TRS government to support farmers after it came into power, he said.
Opposition party leaders, however, do not agree that the meeting is being held solely for the benefit of the farming community.
“It is nothing but a vulgar display of money with elections in mind. People are being bribed to attend the programme,” alleged N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, president, Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee.
The TPCC chief informed that the Congress will also conduct a meeting at the same venue on 2 June to highlight the state government’s failures.
“Opposition and non-party forums have been trying to mobilise farmers, which TRS has realised and cannot ignore,” said Prof. M. Kodandaram, chairman, Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC). He said that the latest financial assistance for farmers was announced without the state having a comprehensive agricultural policy.