TN reeling under severe drought: Finance Min

: Tamil Nadu witnessed a rainfall deficit of nearly 62 per cent owing to monsoon failure and reservoirs that cater to this city only hold upto 10 to 20 percent, Finance Minister D Jayakumar said today.
"As the state is reeling under severe drought, this government faces a formidable challenge in meeting the drinking water needs," he said while presenting the budget for the financial year 2017-18.
While there has been 62 per cent deficit in the rainfall collectively from the South West and North East Monsoon, the groundwater table has also gone down, Jayakumar said.
"Storage in most of the reservoirs supplying water to Chennai is only 10 to 20 per cent of their capacity", he said.

The state government, he said, has taken up works like digging up new deep borewells, rejuvenation of existing borewells and replacement of pump sets at a total cost of Rs 610 crore, he said.