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| Central drought assessment team camping in Uttar Pradesh |
| Virendra Singh Rawat / New Delhi/ Lucknow Aug 19, 2009, 00:28 IST |
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A central government team is presently camping in Uttar Pradesh to take stock of the prevailing drought situation in the state.
UP has already declared 58 of 70 districts as drought-affected owing to deficient rainfall and subsequently a drastic downfall in acreage of kharif crop.
The six-member team, led by Additional Secretary Sanjiv Gupta, held a meeting with UP Chief Secretary Atul Kumar Gupta yesterday.
He said the state had demanded Rs 8,940 crore worth of central drought-relief package.
He informed the central team that the kharif production was likely to dip by 40 per cent owing to deficient rainfall till August 13 as against the target, only 68 per cent sowing had taken place.
The package would be allocated to various departments, including agriculture (Rs 1,130 crore), power (Rs 3,349 crore), irrigation (Rs 2,044 crore), minor irrigation (Rs 519 crore), Jal Nigam (Rs 734 crore), animal husbandry (Rs 639 crore) and mid-day meal (Rs 256 crore).
Meanwhile, the state had received widespread rainfall over the last five days, which was likely to improve the drought situation. The showers would mainly help in the forthcoming rabi sowing season by providing moisture to soil.
Following the drought, the state government claimed to have distributed 2.4 million quintals of free seed to 1.4 million farmers and advised sowing of gram, pulses, bajra and mustard to compensate the loss.
Earlier, UP had set a target of 13.5 and 25,4 million tonnes of paddy and coarse grain, respectively.
The central team, along with state government officials, would form three separate teams and visit three UP regions to assess the ground situation.
The first team would visit Jhansi, Chitrakoot, Varanasi, Mau and Balrampur districts. The second team would visit Meerut, Bulandshahr, Aligarh, Etah, Mainpuri, Kannauj, Kanpur Dehat, Unnao and Lucknow. The third team would visit Faizabad, Ambedkar Nagar, Sultanpur, Bareilly, Pilibhit, Moradabad and Rampur.
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