Bring Central drought assessment team on chartered flight,

Senior NCP leader Ajit Pawar Thursday said Maharashtra is facing drought worse than the one witnessed in 1972 and asked Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to charter a flight to bring a Central drought assessment team to the state.

Addressing reporters here, Pawar slammed the state government and claimed that figures involving the number of villages facing drought have been "fudged" and that people were being "misled".

"Had the state government been serious about getting drought relief from the Centre, it would have sent a chartered flight to bring the Central drought assessment team. The Chief Minister keeps using chartered flights. Why is he waiting for more suicides to take place before drought is declared?" he asked.

He also demanded the government provide financial aid of Rs 50,000 per acre to farmers reeling under severe drought.

Pawar said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on his Shirdi visit recently, had "lied" that the Maharashtra government had made 16,000 villages drought-free.

"Where are these villages then? There is severe water scarcity in 201 talukas and 20,000 villages from 13 districts. Where are the villages facing water scarcity in the government figures?" he questioned.

Pawar further said while the government has released its 11th farm loan waiver list, several farmers, especially in Gondia, were still on the waiting list.

He added that farmers have not been compensated as yet for earlier crop losses and claimed the government, insurance firms and seed companies were not ready to help distressed tillers.

Pawar claimed the condition of dams in Konkan, Vidarbha, Marathwada, north and western Maharashtra was serious.

"The government has to take people and the opposition into confidence and make drinking water arrangement for the next eight months. Arrangements should also be made for water for animals. The arrangement rights should be given to tehsildars and must not be restricted to district collectors," he said.

Pawar also demanded that the earlier "paisewari" system, also referred to as "annewari", should be re-adopted for the declaration of drought.

While the government earlier used the "paisewari" or "annewari" system to declare drought in a particular area, it now follows the Manual for Drought Management, released in December 2016.

Under the "paisewari" system (literally meaning value of crop), officials, just before the harvest of the Kharif crop in October, would make an estimate of the crop grown.

If the crop grown is less than 50 per cent of the average of the preceding ten years, then a drought year would be declared.

Under the new norms, four impact indicators and 13 sub-indices, called trigger indicators, are taken into consideration for the declaration of drought.