New Delhi, 03 October (H.S.): Congress president and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking immediate financial assistance in view of the drought situation in Karnataka. Kharge has claimed that Karnataka is facing one of the most severe droughts in the last 150 years. He has urged the Prime Minister to immediately release, without any deduction, the Rs 3,705.30 crore in relief sought by the state government from the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF).

In his letter to the Prime Minister, the Congress president said Karnataka had recorded a massive 58 per cent deficit in monsoon rainfall up to September, affecting all 31 districts of the state. Between June 1 and August 31, the state received only 477 mm of rainfall against the normal 691 mm, making it the second-lowest rainfall recorded in the past 50 years. Of Karnataka’s 240 taluks, 217 are facing a severe rainfall deficit. Of these, 177 taluks have already been declared drought-hit in three phases, while assessments are continuing in the remaining taluks.

Kharge said agricultural and horticultural crops across 1.952 million hectares in the state had been completely destroyed due to the drought, including 1.785 million hectares of agricultural crops and 167,000 hectares of horticultural crops. The crop damage has been assessed at Rs 18,748.23 crore, while the state is estimated to have suffered an overall economic loss of around Rs 40,000 crore.

Referring to the status of reservoirs, Kharge said that as of August 31, water levels in Karnataka’s 13 major reservoirs were substantially below their storage capacities. He said the Cauvery basin was facing a severe shortfall and that the Krishnaraja Sagar (KRS) Dam, which supplies drinking water to Bengaluru, had only 64 per cent of its storage available. With water levels in hydropower reservoirs falling to 61 per cent, hydropower generation is expected to decline by 5,500 to 6,000 million units. This, he said, would impose an additional financial burden on the state government as it would have to purchase costly electricity for groundwater pumping.

The Congress president urged the Central Government to immediately deploy an additional Central team to assess the damage on the ground in the severely affected Kalyana-Karnataka (Hyderabad-Karnataka) region, apart from the three Inter-Ministerial Central Teams (IMCTs) visiting the state between October 3 and 7.

It is noteworthy that nearly 79 per cent of Karnataka’s geographical area is drought-prone, while 77 per cent of the state falls under the dry or semi-arid category. About 74 per cent of the state’s annual rainfall is received from the southwest monsoon, and its failure has created a severe crisis across all ten agro-climatic zones of Karnataka.

The Karnataka government has submitted a detailed memorandum to the Centre under the Disaster Management Manual, 2020, seeking assistance of Rs 3,705.30 crore. Opposition parties have been consistently pressing the Central Government to release the assistance at the earliest.

---------------

Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar