BRS flays State, Centre for urea crisis in Telangana

HYDERABAD

The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) has criticised the State and Central governments blaming each other for the urea crisis in Telangana as the Centre has been claiming supply of sufficient quantities of the fertilizer but the State has been denying getting the allotted quantity.

Speaking to newspersons here on Saturday, former Minister for Agriculture S. Niranjan Reddy along with party leader B. Suman, A. Venkateshwar Reddy and P. Madhu said if the Centre was correct then where was the urea stock and why the farming community was taking to the streets and waiting for long hours in serpentine queues for getting even one bag of urea.

The situation, scarcity of urea, was aptly reflected in the gesture of some farmers in a village to gift a bag of urea when one of their fellow farmers celebrated his birthday recently. The extent of kharif cultivation had not reached 1.35 crore acres at its peak during the BRS rule as the extent covered was 1.08 crore acres so far.

In the past, 10 lakh tonnes of urea was supplied to farmers without any problem but this year only 5 lakh tonnes had been supplied out of the 9.8 lakh tonnes allotted for the April-September period. Against the daily demand for 15,000 tonnes of urea, the government was unable to supply even 5,000 tonnes.