UP declares 44 districts drought-hit

Centre assures help; steps up national effort to boost rabi sowing

The Uttar Pradesh government has declared 44 of the state’s 75 districts ‘drought-hit’ and sought Rs 6,000 crore as central assistance for relief. It has, thus, become the second state, after Haryana, to declare a drought this year.

The UP districts in question got less than half the normal rainfall this year, even as the monsoon is slowly withdrawing. The state government has also suspended collection of land revenue and irrigation charges from farmers till March 31, 2015.

Last week, the state had set in motion the process of identifying the affected districts. The majority are in western and central UP, besides Bundelkhand.

The districts are Kanpur city, Unnao, Banda, Amethi, Kushinagar, Muzaffarnagar, Shamli, Deoria, Azamgarh, Bareilly, Kannauj, Jhansi, Chitrakoot, Mathura, Aligarh, Amroha, Jalaun, Pilibhit, Mau, Jaunpur, Hamirpur, Faizabad, Saharanpur, Meerut, Rampur, Badaun, Auraiyya, Etah, Kaushambi, Fatehpur, Hapur, Etawah, Kanpur Dehat, Mainpuri, Bulandshahr, Mahoba, Firozabad, Hardoi, Farrukhabad, Gautam Budhha Nagar, Ghaziabad, Agra, Sonbhadra and Maharajganj.

The central funds sought would be utilised for agricultural subsidy, animal husbandry, irrigation, rural development, water supply, power, minor irrigation and forests, among others. The government would provide grants to small and marginal farmers for crop loss of over 50 per cent. Steps would be taken to prevent potential starvation deaths.

The health department is to constitute rapid-response teams to distribute chlorine tablets for clean water and sanitising drinking water resources. Government-run health and medical care centres would be stocked with life-saving drugs.

Agriculture supports over half of UP’s population.

In a related development, the Centre said on wednesday it was willing to help any state which had suffered due to low monsoon rain. The assurance came from agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh while talking to reporters on the sidelines of the two-day annual rabi conference.

Officials said if needed the Centre might send a fact-finding team in the affected districts of UP, as it did for Haryana. It is to also step up effort to improve sowing during the coming rabi season (starting next month), to compensate for the kharif losses. State governments are being asked to focus during rabi on the 3.37 million hectares left unsown due to delayed monsoon. Much of the concentration will be on improving the output of pulses and oilseeds. Both were affected in the kharif season due to delayed rain.

The Centre has set a rabi production target of 94 million tonnes (mt) for wheat. The target for rice has been kept at 14 mt, pulses at 12.5 mt and oilseeds at 11 mt, Agriculture Commissioner J S Sandhu said. Last year, the wheat target was 92.5 mt and the harvest was a record 95.91 mt.

Dismal picture in Uttar Pradesh

• Forty four districts have received less than 50 per cent of normal rainfall this year
   
• UP government suspends collection of land revenue and irrigation charges from farmers till March 31, 2015
   
• Last week, the state began the process of identifying drought-hit districts so that relief measures could be started
  

 

Health department to constitute rapid-response teams to distribute chlorine tablets and sanitising drinking water