Bengaluru: Disappointed by the poor monsoon, the state government has decided to go ahead with cloudseeding from the second week of July.
Speaking to reporters after the cabinet meeting here on Friday, rural development and panchayat raj minister , Krishna Byregowda said due to aerospace constraints, the cloud seeding venue had shifted from Bengaluru to Mysuru . The other venue would remain Hubballi.
“The company, which has bagged the contract for cloudseeding, has started its work to modify the aircraft.
The radars are being imported and other arrangements are being made,” he revealed.
Although it was decided to do cloudseeding from Bengaluru and Hubballi, it was pointed out during the meeting with DGCA and defence officials that there would be aerospace constraints in the city, he revealed “At present, the Bengaluru International Airport, Yelahanka Air Force base and HAL are using Bengaluru aerospace. The cloudseeding will add to the pressure in an already congested aerospace. So, the venue was shifted to Mysuru, where the activity will begin in July second week,” he explained.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet noted that although Rs 90 crore was spent on the operation of the mobile App developed for accurate assessment of crop patterns in the state, nothing had come of it.
“Neither the agriculture nor horticulture departments have proper statistics on how much of each crop is grown in the state. The variation in the random estimation and ground reality is a whopping 40 per cent to 300 per cent,” the minister said.
As for the mobile app developed by the state and which has details of all 2.2 crore agriculture plots in the state, he said youth, who had passed SSLC, would be hired for a pay of Rs 10 per upload.
They would be advised to upload at least 50 plot cropping patterns every day, according to him.
