Raghuveera demands Babu's apology

Agriculture Minister N Raghuveera Reddy on Tuesday demanded that former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu tender an unconditional apology for his alleged vitriolic remarks made against the State Governor ESL Narsimhan. 

Mr Raghuveera Reddy told media persons that Mr Naidu had no locus standi to criticise the Governor particularly when the latter went to Anantapur district to know the problems of the farmers.  Anantapur district was always in the grip of drought and the governor had spent an hour with the groundnut farmers to check whether they received any compensation from the state government. 

The Minister stated that the district suffered due to drought for seven years. In contrast to the Rs 598 crore as compensation given by TDP regime during 1995-2005, the Congress government recently gave Rs 2700 crore compensation as crop insurance to the farmers, Mr Raghuveera Reddy revealed.  

He said that, by and large the district reels under drought due to either excess rains or no rains.  The then YSR government with Centre's assistance had evolved a new crop insurance scheme for the farmers on the lines of an American system. Recently US University students had also visited and their version for utilising modern farm techniques are being taken into account, he said. 

The Minister condemned Mr Naidu’s criticism against the Governor saying that the TDP chief had done nothing for the welfare of the farmers during his stint in power.  Mr Raghuveera Reddy sarcastically remarked that Mr Naidu was allergic to farmers' woes and knew nothing about their grievances. 

 Referring to Mr Naidu's statement regarding Chief Minister K Rosaiah, the Minister stated that he had no business to teach lessons and that he be in his limits. "Despite all odds, Mr Rosaiah has been functioning effectively,” he said, and added that the Chief Minister was 1,000 times better than Mr Naidu, who had come to power backstabbing his mentor and ignored NTR's pet policies like prohibition, Rs 2-a-kg scheme, among others.