Warangal, Oct. 26: Agitating against the sale of spurious hybrid cotton seeds, around 200 farmers from Chintanekkonda village of Parvathagiri Mandal attacked seed shops in the city on Tuesday.

The farmers, who incurred huge losses due to the spurious hybrid cotton seeds manufactured at Nagpur, came in a procession from their village to the Station Road in the city where seed dealers shops are located and started attacking the shops. Coming to know of the massive procession of farmers, local seed dealers, fearing for their lives, closed down the shutters of their shops and went into hiding.

Enraged at the closure of the shops before their arrival, the irate farmers pelted stones and tried to break the shutters. Police, who were deployed in large numbers prevented farmers from indulging in arson on Station Road where agitation by farmers has become the order of the day.

The unrelenting farmers a staged a rasta roko throwing traffic on the busy Station Road out of gear for more than three hours. Farmers demanded the presence of Collector N Siva Sankar and Joint Director of Agriculture to assure them of the compensation. Joint Director of Agriculture N Laxman Rao arrived at the spot along with revenue officials and seized the Mahalaxmi seed dealers shop which allegedly sold them spurious hybrid cotton seeds.

Chintanekkonda Sarpanch Chandru Naik and other farmers’ leaders, Shyamsu-nder Rao and Bala Kishan Rao, said that they had purchased hybrid cotton seeds at prices higher than the maximum retail price thinking that they were genuine.

“Shockingly, the crop totally failed to give any yield in all farms of the village where farmers, misguided by dealers paid heavy prices, thinking that they were getting genuine seeds,” said N Venugopal Reddy, State president of the Kisan Morcha.

Officials assured the farmers that they would bring the dealers to the negotiating table and make them pay for the losses as per the MoU. Earlier, the farmers took the officials to task and accused them of taking huge bribes to allow the sale of spurious seeds, pesticides and other agriculture inputs.

..DC