Dattareyya Wants Central Team To Assess Telangana Drought

Secunderabad MP Bandaru Dattatreya on Friday requested the Centre to send a Central Team to assess the drought situation in Telangana and provide quick relief to the farmers.

Participating in the debate in the Lok Sabha on Friday, Dattatreya also requested allocation of an additional 1,000 MW of unallocated power to Telangana to rescue the farming sector.

"The farmers should be given additional loans at low interest rates, and seeds to cultivate alternative crops during this Kharif season. Along with these temporary measures, the Government of India should also focus on permanent measures for the benefit of the agriculture sector, as Telangana is a drought-prone State," he said.

He also demanded that the Pranahita Chevella irrigation project be declared as a National Project immediately.

Dattatreya drew the attention of the Centre to the deficit rainfall in Telangana. Quoting the statistics of the meteorological department, he said that the rainfall in Telangana so far was as low as 146.77 mm, compared to 487 mm recorded during the corresponding previous period. He said that the Nizamabad and Nalgonda districts were the worst affected, with deficit rainfall of 36%. Of 464 mandals, as many as 426 mandals had received either scanty or deficient rainfall.

"With the failure of the monsoon, the cultivation of crops has come down by an area of 10 lakhs hectares. The food grains crop and pulses crop cultivation areas have decreased by 29% and 41% respectively in our State. And the groundnut crop is the worst affected, with a reduction of 89% in the cultivating area when compared to the previous year's cultivated area," he said.

Due to the scarcity of water, paddy is being grown in just 10 lakh hectares, although the Telangana government had set a target of production of 1.05 crore tonnes during this Kharif season, he lamented. He said the farmers were forced to depend on 23 lakh borewells due to the failure of the monsoon. However, the shortage of power was affecting the usage of borewells in Telangana, too.

Dattatreya also expressed concern over the non-implementation of the promise of waiver of agricultural loans. He claimed that this year 24 farmers had committed suicide due to the debt trap. (INN)