Bengaluru: Bracing to tackle the worst ever drought in the state, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday blamed the Centre for not releasing funds for providing relief as per the norms to the state.
However, the state government has ensured that there is no dearth of drinking water anywhere and the district administrations are being provided adequate funds to face any eventuality.
Speaking to reporters after a video conference with the CEOs of zilla panchayats (ZPs) and deputy commissioners of 30 districts, Mr Siddaramaiah said about 1,575 villages were being supplied water in tankers. District officials have been asked to hire private borewells and draw and provide water to people in need. Private borewell owners would be paid on a monthly basis for renting their water sources, he said, adding that the DCs and ZP CEOs would be held responsible if water is not provided to any village or town.
Meanwhile, each task force functioning under the local legislator has been provided Rs 1.9 crore each while the ZP CEOs have been given Rs 1 crore each. Besides, the government had released Rs 95 crore to the RDPR department and Rs 60 crore to the revenue department for the year 2017-18, he said. Reacting to reports in a section of media that there was a fodder scam in the state, Mr Siddaramaiah said the reports were false and baseless. The government had stocks to last upto 20 weeks and has opened 384 fodder banks and 84 cattle shelters, besides distributing 7 lakh fodder mini-kits among farmers. Under the job guarantee scheme, the government had spent Rs 3316 crore under MGNREGA during 2016-17 and released another Rs 10 crore for 2017-18. As per norms, the Centre had to release over Rs 4702 crore, but has released only Rs 1685 crore, he disclosed.
