YSR dedicates National Leadership Award to farmers

Hyderabad, Sep 14 (UNI) The Andhra Pradesh Government dedicated all awards and honours of National and International level to farmers, who toiled day and night to make the State reach the top position in agriculture in the country.

Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy disclosed this with Irrigation and Agriculture Ministers Ponnala Lakshmaiah and N Raghuveera Reddy and other senior officials while reviewing the performance of the agriculture sector, in the context of main reservoirs being almost full.

He directed the ministers to perform Varuna Puja at project sites as the State had witnessed unprecedented rains for the last five years. All major reservoirs of the state were full for five subsequent years and he termed it as a 'historic occasion', since for the first time such a thing has happened in the history of the state.

Agricultural labourers were able to get work for minimum 100 days a year under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which improved the rural livelihood,'' he said.

The Chief Minister pointed out that 7 out of 9 years of previous Government rule were faced with acute drought. The agriculture sector was completely beleaguered during a decade-long regime of the previous government, which had described cultivation as a ''useless activity'' (Dandaga) and declined to pay any compensation to families of farmers, who committed suicide out of distress.

While complimenting 1.4 crore farmer families for all these prestigious awards and honours, the Chief Minister recalled that the UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi described Andhra Pradesh as the best state in the country in agriculture sector and paid rich tributes to the farming community of the State, during her recent public meetings at Tirupati and Anantapur.

He said the present government had fulfilled all its pre-poll promises made to farmers, such as provision of loans at ''Pavala Vaddi,'' free power to 26 lakh agricultural pumpsets, record supply of 151 lakh tonnes of fertilizers, 92 lakh quintals of seeds in 2008-09. This was in contrast to lack of free power supply, supply of only 58 lakh quintals of seeds and 118 lakh tonnes of fertilizers in 2003-04.

UNI BR DB SK RK2001