‘Rythanna Meekosam’ a publicity stunt, says YSRCP leader

YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) regional coordinator and former Minister Karumuri Venkata Nageswara Rao on Tuesday said farmers in Andhra Pradesh were enduring the “worst crisis in recent memory” under the TDP-led NDA government.

Dismissing the Rythanna Meekosam programme as a publicity stunt, orchestrated for optics with party workers in green shawls, rather than a genuine attempt to address the agrarian distress, Mr. Nageswara Rao told the media at Tadepalli on Wednesday that this was nothing but a farmers’ deception campaign, with crores of public money wasted on propaganda.

Questioning why Ministers were avoiding direct interaction with the farmers even as crops were failing to fetch minimum support price (MSP), he said paddy, which was expected to sell at ₹1,770 per quintal, was being sold to middlemen for ₹1,200 to ₹1,300, creating a “broker raj.”

In contrast, the YSRCP government had ensured MSP, gunnysacks, hamali charges, transportation, insurance, zero-interest loans, and input subsidies, he claimed.

Referring to the plight of banana farmers, he said they were forced to sell at 50 paise per kg while consumers pay ₹50, benefiting only the middlemen.

“The government’s ‘Sampada Srushti’ initiative has raised the State’s debt to ₹2.66 lakh crore,” he alleged, and demanded MSP assurance for all crops and advance supply of seeds and fertilizers.

‘Political vendetta’

Meanwhile, former MLA and YSRCP SC Cell State president T.J.R. Sudhakar Babu accused the government of blatantly violating the Constitution and abusing power to target opposition party leaders. He also accused the government of resorting to political revenge and filing cases without evidence or justification.

The government failed to deliver meaningful progress in the last 18 months, and instead focused on suppressing opposition voice, he said.

Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu was indulging in “malicious and unethical politics, misusing government machinery, and orchestrating arrests of YSRCP leaders without credible eveidence,” he alleged.

The TDP regime was relying on diversion politics, including “dramatised public tours under the guise of pension distribution,” the YSRCP leader said. He also accused the TDP of fuelling factional disputes that resulted in murders in Palnadu and Prakasam districts. YSRCP leader Pinnelli Ramakrishna Reddy’s family was framed in the murder cases, he alleged.

Mr. Sudhakar Babu also condemned the arrest of former Minister Jogi Ramesh in the alleged illegal liquor case, calling it a politically motivated move without evidence. He claimed that former Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy had never resorted to political vendetta.