Khammam traders offer cotton for `6,300/quintal
Slams Centre for U-turn on setting up rly factory
Cotton farmers of Khammam are happy over the crossing the prices of cotton more than its minimum support price of
`5,820 per quintal.
The traders offered
`6,300 per quintal cotton in the Khammam market on Thursday. With this, the farmers showed interest to sell their produce in the market instead of cotton lifting centres being run by the Cotton Corporation of India. Nearly
1500 bags of cotton have arrived on the market.
Gudavarti Srinivasa Rao, a trader in the Khammam market, said that cotton production is lessened by 25 per cent in India, which caused the increase in cotton prices. The sudden jump of 356kilo cotton bales jumped to `43,000 from `40,000 in the international market,
forcing the local traders to lift cotton at more price. The traders of Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam and China are buying cotton from India. The cloth-making companies used to lift cotton every year.
N. Nageswara Rao, a farmer from Mudigonda, said that the price would fetch their input costs. “We will come out from our debts at this price”,
he said.
On the other hand, the chilli price touched `15,000 in the market, and the traders offered `15,075 initial price per quintal cotton. About 1900 bags of chilli were sold in Khammam market on Thursday. The farmers unions demanded the government maintain the price to bail out the chilli farmers who made cotton farming debts.
TRS working president and IT minister K.T. Rama Rao on Thursday came down heavily against the Centre for its failure to set up a rail coach factory in Kazipet despite an assurance made in Parliament during the passage of AP Reorganisation Act, 2014. Citing an RTI reply, Rama Rao slammed the Centre’s U-turn on the issue.
“A rail coach factory is the constitutional right of Telangana. BJP does not have any right to reject or make a U-turn on the promise made in Parliament," the minister said, adding that his party MPs would fight for it in the upcoming Parliament sessions. “The BJP government at the Centre has been taking Telangana for a ride. It has exhibited its antiTelangana stance by failing to fulfill its promise to set up a railway coach factory,” he said.
He vehemently criticised the response given by the Railway Minister, who, responding to a RTI petition, said that there was no need for a rail coach factory in Telangana.
Rama Rao said that the Union Government, which had already canceled the ITIR project and curbed IT development in Hyderabad, had made it clear that there was no need for the rail coach factory.
The minister demanded that the Centre should immediately change its decision and come clear on the coach factory in Kazipet. He recalled that Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao had personally appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on this issue.
He said that the state government was making efforts to realise this dream.
As part of this, they had already procured space for the railway coach factory. He said that 150 acres of land had been specially acquired and handed over to the Railways for setting up the coach factory.
Rama Rao said that despite repeated consultations on projects pertaining to Telangana, nothing worthwhile was coming in from the Centre.
There is no response on the State’s demands for eight pending railway lines, two new lines, Kazipet wagon factory, Kazipet railway division, and setting up of a railway university.
The minister lamented that there was a big zero for Telangana in the Union budget. He said that even in the latest budget, not a single rupee has been allocated for railway projects in Telangana.