Kisan Congress Seeks Drought Tag For 624 Mandals
Provide relief to the farming community on a war footing: Reports
KAKINADA: The Andhra Pradesh Kisan Congress has demanded that the state government declare 624 of the 688 mandals in the State as drought-affected and waive all outstanding loans of farmers and tenant farmers on an urgent basis.
It also urged the government to deploy teams of Agriculture and Revenue officials to tour all drought-affected mandals, assess the situation and submit reports, and provide relief to the farming community on a war footing.
Andhra Pradesh Kisan Congress chairman Kamana Prabhakara Rao alleged that the government was ignoring the severity of the drought by declaring only 283 mandals as severely drought-affected and 105 as moderately affected.
He said agricultural statistics showed that crops had not been sown on 10 lakh acres as of September 30, while more than 90% of the cultivated area had been affected this season, largely due to the El Nino effect, resulting in the drying up of more than half of the sown crops.
Prabhakara Rao said the drought had caused severe hardship, particularly in Rayalaseema and North Andhra, with farm labourers migrating in search of work and livestock suffering from a shortage of drinking water and fodder.
He demanded that villages be treated as individual units while declaring drought-affected areas. He also called for immediate relief measures, including waiver of existing bank loans of farmers and tenant farmers, sanctioning of fresh loans and immediate disbursement of input subsidies to enable farmers to replant with short-duration seed varieties. He further urged the government to immediately supply cattle fodder to all villages in Rayalaseema and North Andhra to protect livestock.