Deekonda Ravishanker Hans News Service Nalgonda

Thousandsof acres of standing crops are withering across Telangana because of inadequate irrigation water and erratic power supply, state BJP president N Ramchander Rao said, lashing out the Congress government for failing to protect farmers.

During his tour of Nalgonda district, he visited Chinna Madaram village on Wednesday to inspect fields where crops had completely dried up due to a lack of water. He then spoke with local farmers to understand their issues and the hardships they faced. He also personally visited the Chinna Madaram electrical substation and questioned officials regarding the actual power supply situation on the ground.

Later, addressing the media, Ramchander Rao expressed outrage that the state government had failed miserably to provide the continuous power supply farmers need to save their crops. He expressed deep anguish over farmers’ plight in tears as their ready-to-harvest crops wither before their eyes due to a lack of timely, adequate electricity, non-functional borewells, and failure to deliver water to the fields. He emphasised that this dire situation is not limited to just one village or region; farmers across the undivided Nalgonda district, the Krishna river basin, and the entire state of Telangana are facing acute shortages of electricity and irrigation water.

He asserted that the government bears full responsibility for the farmers’ plight and urged those in power to introspect regarding their errors.

Sri Ramchander Rao alleged that farmers are suffering heavy losses not only because the state failed to provide timely, quality electricity but also because it has not implemented the ‘Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana’—a flagship scheme of the Central Government. He expressed anguish that farmers, who invested thousands of rupees per acre in cultivation, are now in a situation where they cannot even recover their investment.

He criticised the current Congress government for following the same path as the previous BRS government by playing with farmers’ lives.

He demanded that the government respond immediately by conducting a field-level survey of withered crops and providing adequate compensation to every affected farmer. He reiterated that the BJP would continue to fight for farmers.