Former minister and senior TDP leader, Somireddy Chandra Mohan Reddy, demanded that the Chief Minister, Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, tender an apology to the farmers of the State for misleading the Assembly by providing wrong statistics on the amount spent for the farming sector.

Chandra Mohan Reddy told media persons that Jagan has been wasting crores of public money in the shape of advertisements only to spread false propaganda among the people. This amounts to taking the people for a ride, he remarked.

On the closing day of the last Assembly session, the Chief Minister told the House that his Government has spent Rs 1,27,823 cr for farmers’ welfare in the past 40 months. Also, he has released full-page advertisements for the media on the same point in which he also mentioned that Rs 2.39 lakh cr was spent for women which means that totally for both women and farmers he has spent Rs 3,66,836 cr. This is nothing but a false statement, he said.

The TDP senior leader asked as to how the food grain purchase can be shown as an assistance for farmers, and this is for the first time in the country’s history that food grains purchase is shown as an expenditure for farmers’ welfare. Somireddy also demanded the Government to make it public whether quality power was supplied for nine hours in a day in any part of the State.

He is of the opinion that the State Government did not spend even a single rupee though Rs 1,264 cr was allocated for irrigation in the 2021 budgetary proposals. Jagan is giving all wrong statistics and in fact, the agricultural sector has totally got spoiled during the YSRCP rule, he observed.

Andhra Pradesh is now in the sixth place in the country in farmers’ suicides, he said and demanded that the ruling party publish a white paper on the details of the expenditure on farm sector. He said that privilege notices should be served on the Chief Minister for producing wrong statistics and Jagan should tender an apology to the farmers.