Hyderabad: Centre told to hike farmer sop

Hyderabad: TRS MP Dr Ranjit Reddy has demanded that the Centre give Rs 10,000 as input subsidy per acre on par with the TRS government.

During Question Hour in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, Dr Reddy said there are two important areas on which the government has to focus to double the income of farmers. He said the first one is input subsidy and the second one is the marketing of agriculture produce.

He said that the Telan-gana state government under the Rythu Bandhu scheme was giving Rs 10,000 as input subsidy per acre. But under the PM Kisan scheme, the Centre is giving only Rs 6,000 as input subsidy even if a farmer has five acres. He said if a farmer has five acres in Telanga-na state, he will get Rs 50,000. He asked the Centre whether it would increase the input subsidy to farmers to Rs 10,000 from the existing Rs 6,000 per acre.

About marketing, Dr Reddy said under e-NAM (Electronic National Agriculture Market), the government had linked only 585 mandis so far out of the nearly 22,000 and asked how many years it would take to link all markets to the main platform.

Replying to this, Union agriculture minister Purushottham Rupala said that the Centre was implementing the input subsidy scheme for the first time. He said that across the nation the Centre was crediting Rs 6,000 in the farmers’ bank accounts directly. He said that the state governments were implementing several schemes for farmers. He thanked the Telangana state government for giving Rs 10,000 per acre to farmers.