Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) president and Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) on Sunday called upon farmers to play a decisive role in the 2024 general elections and change the destiny of the nation.
“The time has come for farmers to script a new history. Their hands, which have hitherto been ploughing the fields, should enact laws in the legislature. It is not candidates of various political parties, but farmers who have to win the elections in big numbers to transform the country,” KCR told a rally at Nanded town in Maharashtra.
It was the first rally of BRS outside Telangana state, heralding the national mission of the Telangana chief minister. The entire town was painted pink with flags, banners, hoardings and cut-outs of BRS.
KCR said India was not a poor nation, but richer than the United States of America. “It is the land of intellectuals, hardworking people and farmers. The country has been endowed with enormous natural resources, including a huge extent of cultivable land. But the people have been subject to deceit and exploitation for the last seven decades,” he regretted.
Stating that he had transformed Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) into BRS, intending to bring radical and qualitative changes in the governance, the party president said the country had failed to achieve much progress due to lopsided policies and priorities of the successive governments in the last 75 years.
He pointed out that hundreds of farmers were dying by suicide in Maharashtra due to crop failures due to a lack of irrigation facilities, proper power supply and minimum support price. “That is why, the BRS has come forward with the farmers’ agenda and raised the slogan: Ab ki baar, kisan sarkar. It is not a political battle in the next elections but a battle for life and death,” he said.
The Telangana chief minister pooh-poohed the Make India slogan of the Narendra Modi government. “It has become a joke in India. Everything is being imported from other countries. Even small objects like kites, idols of deities and even national flags are also being imported from China. The China Bazars have been mushrooming everywhere in the country, including Nanded,” he pointed out.
He found fault with the governments for neglecting the irrigation sector. Even after 75 years, India doesn’t have a reservoir that can hold 2,000 tmc of water. The Centre was not resolving inter-state water disputes and dodging them in the name of tribunals,” he alleged.
KCR explained how Telangana, which had innumerable problems at the time of its formation in 2014, had made rapid progress in several fields due to welfare schemes like round-the-clock free power supply, Rythu Bandhu, Rythu Bima, Mission Bhagiratha, Dalit Bandhu etc. and emerged as a role model for the entire country.
“When these schemes are possible in Telangana, why can’t they be implemented in neighbouring Maharashtra?” he asked.
He vowed to implement all these welfare schemes across the country if BRS was voted to power at the Centre in the next general elections.
Several sarpanches and local leaders of Nanded joined the BRS in the presence of the Telangana chief minister before the meeting.
