KKR pleas PM to treat flood relief as grant

Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy on Monday addressed a letter to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the extensive damages caused due to the series of natural calamities including the recent depression in Bay of Bengal that devastated the State and has also requested the PM to issue suitable instructions in the matter which is of vital importance to the farming community of the State.

 Thanking the PM for sanctioning an amount of Rs 400 crore for the immediate relief to the State, Mr Kiran Kumar Reddy requested him that this amount may be treated as grant over and above the CRF limit. 

The Chief Minister also thanked the PM for deputing an inter-Ministerial Central team for an on-the-spot assessment of damages caused due to heavy rains, floods and ‘Jal’ cyclone that occurred in the month of November, 2010. This calamity affected 5327 villages in 15 districts.  It has resulted in a large scale devastation of 11.53 lakh hectares of agriculture and horticulture crops, besides affecting animal husbandry sector.  This has also affected the livelihood of over 20 lakh small and marginal farmers of the State resulting in an extensive damage to public infrastructure and the estimated damage is Rs 1,207.72 crore, the Chief Minister mentioned in the letter.

“As per the existing CRF norms, the input subsidy comes to Rs 389.04 crore.  However, considering the Magnitude of the calamity, the State Government has gone ahead and announced relief at an enhanced norm of Rs 6,000 per hectare for paddy.  At this rate the commitment of input subsidy comes to Rs 593.12 crore.  The total input subsidy comes to Rs 649.18 crore, if we include the estimated requirement of input subsidy for the damages to Groundnut crop to the tune of Rs 56.04 crore”, the Chief Minister said.

He added that “there is a wide spread demand for increasing the input subsidy of major crops like paddy, cotton, groundnut and sugarcane considering the increase in cost of cultivation.  I urge upon you to consider enhancing scale of relief to the farmers affected by natural calamities in accordance with the recommendations of the Working Group on Agriculture Production headed by Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda”.

The State Government is also sending a detailed memorandum to the GoI on the damages caused due to depression in Bay of Bengal from December 5 to 12, 2010.

In all 15 districts Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, Visakhapatnam, East Godavari, West Godavari, Krishna, Guntur, Prakasam, Nellore, chittoor, Kadapa, Mahabubnagar, Warangal, Khammam and Nalgonda were affected due to the rains during this period.  5327 villages affected were, 8.16 lakhs population affected, total cropped area affected including Agriculture, Horticulture and Sericulture was 12.08 lakh hectares. The estimated crop loss is 192769.75 lakh and the area of crop damaged (more than 50 per cent) was 11.99 lakh hectares.  Number of houses damaged during the period was 3,169 out of which fully damaged pucca houses were 106, fully damaged kutcha houses were 364, severely damaged pucca houses were 14, severely damaged kutcha houses were 2,654, partly damaged houses (pucca and kutcha) were 31 and the estimated value of damage to houses is Rs 1345.92 lakhs.  The number of human lives lost was 21, number of big animals lost was 75, number of small animals lost was 3,001 and number of poultry (birds) perished was 4,740.

Around 768.07 kilo meters length of road surface was damaged under R and B.  Under Panchayat Raj 3,662.2 kilo meters length of roads were damaged.  Under minor irrigation 182 tanks were breached and damaged during the above said period. The estimated value of the damage to public properties under Health department is Rs 79496.41 lakh.  Similarly the estimated total damage to Houses, crops (including live stock loss and fodder loss) and public properties is Rs 273932.50 lakh.