Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao today announced that all the necessary precautions were being taken to avert entry of locusts into Telangana.
Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao today announced that all the necessary precautions were being taken to avert entry of locusts into the state.
He said that all the district Collectors and police officials on the borders with Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh had been alerted, and that fire engines, jetting machines and pesticides had been put in place.
A five-member committee had also been appointed to keep a tab on the movement of locusts and to monitor the measures to prevent them from entering the state, he added.
The CM was speaking after a high-level review meeting at Pragathi Bhavan today on the measures to be taken if the locusts entered the state. Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar, DGP Mahender Reddy, Principal Secretaries B Janardhan Reddy, S Narsing Rao and Jayesh Ranjan, PCCF Shobha, Disaster Management Secretary Rahul Bojja, DG (Fire Services) Sanjay Kumar Jain, Agriculture University Vice-Chancellor Praveen Rao, CIPM Plant Protection Officer R Sunitha, Agriculture University Principal Scientist Dr S J Rehman and others were part of the meeting.
The CM reviewed the entry of the locusts into the country, their travel, their impact and other related issues. He enquired on the possible direction the locust groups could take in the days to come. The locusts' group that entered the country from Rajasthan, is currently travelling to Balaghat in Madhya Pradesh from Maharashtra via Bhandara and Gondia. Experts estimate that the chances are that they would travel from Madhya Pradesh to north India and then travel towards Punjab. Since locusts travel along the direction of the wind, if the winds blow towards the south, they may travel via Chhattisgarh to Telangana, too, though the chances that the locusts would enter the state are low.
The CM, however, decided to take all the possible precautions.
"Areas bordering Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh should be on high alert. If the locusts enter, they should be killed on the borders by the spraying of pesticides," the CM said.
To track the travel of the locusts and monitor the measures to avert their entry, as mentioned earlier, the government has appointed a five-member committee. CIPM Plant Protection Officer R Sunitha, Agriculture University Principal Scientist Dr S J Rehman, Warangal Conservator of Forests Akbar, Ramagundam Police Commissioner Satyanarayana and Mancherial Collector Bharathi are members of the committee. The committee will stay in Ramagundam for four days from Friday, and will monitor the situation from Adilabad to Bhadrachalam alongside the river Godavari through helicopters. It will also monitor the killing of the locusts if they enter the state.
Minister Puvvada Ajay, Whip Balka Suman, MLAs Laxma Reddy, Marri Janardhan Reddy, Manohar Reddy, Sandra Venkata Veeraiah and Jeevan Reddy, Hyderabad Mayor Bonthu Rammohan, Corporation Chairmen Mareddy Srinivas Reddy and Bala Mallu, and others also participated in the meeting.