Amid Covid-19 crisis, locusts pose another threat to kharif crops in India

Another threat
 
Amid Covid-19 crisis, there is another threat that India is dealing with — locust attack that can destroy food crops. Currently, a thick cloud of locusts is spread over Maharashtra covering an area of a few kilometres from Ramtek to the Madhya Pradesh borders and it is moving eastwards towards Telangana. As many as 23 swarms of locusts had entered India from Pakistan and experts said they were unlikely to move out before July-end. In view of this, many task forces, involving senior IAS officers, have been set up by Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhara Rao to handle the possible attack. The Telangana government has deployed 47 ground teams to spray chemicals and take other measures to curb the menace. The government has to make sure the threat is eliminated before the onset of the Kharif season in the last week of July.

 
Yediyurappa in trouble!
 

Recently several BJP MLAs from North Karnataka, especially those belonging to the Lingayat community — to which the Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa belongs —held a meeting, in which they reportedly expressed displeasure over his style of functioning. The party insiders feel this could possibly be in view of the upcoming Rajya Sabha and Karnataka Legislative Council elections, to be held later this month.
 
Sources say the Congress-JD(S) rebels, who won the bypolls on BJP tickets last December, have set their eyes on ministerial berths, hoping for a possible government expansion after the Legislative Council polls. While some are persistent with their demand for ministerial berths and have put the CM in a fix, the Centre is unwilling to make all of them ministers.