PNS|Vijayawada
YSRCP chief Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy on Saturday alleged that farmers in Andhra Pradesh are enduring severe distress due to the TDP-led NDA government’s failure to ensure a minimum support price (MSP) for their crops, pushing them to protest and fall into financial ruin.
The former chief minister pointed out that “despite widespread agitation”, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and his administration have allegedly shown a lack of empathy, “ignoring the plight of farmers struggling to recover their investments”.
“Farmers are sinking into debt, unable to recover input costs, while the government doesn’t even look their way,” said Reddy in a post on ‘X’, adding that crops such as chillies, cotton, jowar, red gram, black gram, green gram, maize, millets, ragi, groundnut, tomato, banana, sugarcane, and tobacco are fetching prices far below the MSP.
According to the opposition leader, the NDA government of the TDP, BJP, and Janasena has failed to intervene in the market or take responsibility for stabilising prices, instead using “deceptive tactics that betray the trust of the agricultural community.”
Though chilli farmers were promised procurement by National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED) at Rs 11,781 per quintal, the YSRCP supremo claimed that not a single rupee was spent nor a single quintal purchased.
In contrast, Reddy asserted that during the previous YSRCP regime, Rs 3,000 crore was allocated under a price stabilisation fund, and Rs 7,796 crore was spent over five years to support farmers, including those growing tobacco, a crop not covered under MSP.
“Our historic decisions brought relief to farmers. Had this government continued our policies, farmers would not be suffering today,” he said, adding that the Naidu-led NDA government’s “allocation of Rs 300 crore in this year’s (FY26) budget for farmer support is grossly inadequate”.
Observing that there is no evidence this amount has been utilised, Reddy said farmers growing paddy, cocoa, and tobacco, along with aquaculture farmers, are protesting across various districts as the “government remains indifferent, behaving like an emperor fiddling while Rome was burning.”
With 60 per cent of the state’s population dependent on agriculture, Reddy noted that this alleged neglect risks plunging the sector into crisis, threatening livelihoods and food security.
The YSRCP chief demanded immediate government intervention in the market to ensure MSP for all crops and urged the state to procure produce through Markfed to provide direct relief to farmers.
“We cannot allow the backbone of our state to break under the weight of apathy. The government must act now to save our farmers,” he added.
