Telangana urges Centre to send teams to assess rain damage, extend help

Officials put extent of damage at 1.5 lakh acres as per enumeration done till Sunday afternoon

Chairman of the Rythu Bandhu Samithi (RBS) and MLC Palla Rajeshwar Reddy has requested the Centre to send its teams to Telangana and assess the crop damage and loss due to untimely rains, hailstorm and gale over the past few days across the State and extend assistance “keeping aside its dislike” for the Telangana government.

Addressing a press conference here on Monday along with legislators Gandra Venkataramana Reddy, K.P. Vivekanand Goud and Sandra Venkata Veeraiah, he said with the help of cluster-level officers of the Agriculture and Horticulture departments, the authorities have estimated the damage and loss on an extent of about 1.5 lakh acres pertaining to 80,000 farmers till Sunday afternoon.

He stated that the assessment of damage would be completed over the next 2-3 days to get a complete picture of the damage caused by natural calamity. He explained that mango and papaya orchards, maize, chilli, paddy and vegetable crops had borne the maximum brunt even as commercial crops such as onion, tobacco, red chilli, flowers and others have also been affected either in the fields or at drying platforms.

He assured that the State government would come to the farmers’ rescue in whatever manner possible, irrespective of the Centre’s assistance, after completion of the assessment as it did last year in case of damaged crops in Narsampet and Parakal areas. On crop insurance, he reiterated that the State government had been requesting the Centre to bring in a new policy that would be helpful to farmers and not insurance companies.

He stated that the existing Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) was a meaningless scheme as it was more beneficial to insurance companies rather than farmers. That was the reason States such as West Bengal, Telangana, Gujarat and others were not implementing it. Citing Telangana’s experience, he stated that as against ₹880 crore premium paid by farmers in 2019, the compensation given was only ₹488 crore in spite of crop loss reports sent.

It was unfortunate that untimely rains had dashed the hopes of a section of farmers in all 32 rural districts at a time when the administration was happy about cultivation of rabi crops on 72 lakh acres and horticultural crops on another 15 lakh acres. Irrespective of the Centre’s non-cooperative approach, Telangana government had been extending ₹15,000 crore a year since 2018-19 under Rythu Bandhu and helped one lakh farmers-families under Rythu Bima with its own revenues.

Mr. Venkataramana Reddy appealed to the Centre to not to let the people of Telangana suffer out of vengeance against the ruling BRS party and help farmers who suffered loss due to untimely rain.