“I really feel sad to know that farmers are setting their crops on fire, and it is really harrowing to know that paddy farmers are hanging themselves in their agricultural lands,” said TDP general secretary, Nara Lokesh, on Monday.
In an open letter to Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy, the TDP general secretary said that the whole State is now witnessing heart-rendering scenes of paddy cultivators falling at the feet of the officials to release water to save their standing crops. Farmers are coming onto the roads across the whole State, Lokesh said and expressed serious concern that if the State Government does not respond on a war-footing basis there is every danger that Andhra Pradesh will soon turn into a State without farming community.
The State has not witnessed this kind of drought situation in the past 100 years, Lokesh said in the open letter and pointed out that the lowest-ever rainfall is recorded for the first time in the YSRCP regime. Regretting that the State stood in the third position in farmers suicides in the country, Mr Lokesh felt that the Jagan Reddy Government has miserably failed in explaining to the Centre the ground situation prevailing in various mandals.
When the situation during the Kharif season is like this, one can easily understand the Rabi season, he stated. Pointing out that many reservoirs do not have sufficient water reserves while in others water is not being released despite having sufficient water reserves, Lokesh regretted that when former chief minister, Chandrababu Naidu, went to explain in detail the situation to the people, he has been illegally arrested and sent to jail only to stifle his voice.
“People are really unfortunate that the State has a Chief Minister who has sufficient time to review the conspiracies to retain Chandrababu inside the jail by managing the systems but not on the prevailing drought condition in the State,” Lokesh observed in the open letter. Farmers in the Pennar, the Krishna and the Tungabhadra deltas are coming onto the roads demanding supply of water for irrigation as crops like paddy, cotton and groundnut got completely damaged, he felt.
Though the farmers are trying to save their crop by supplying water from the bore-wells, this is becoming impossible as there is no power supply, Lokesh said in the open letter to the Chief Minister and demanded the State Government to initiate urgent measures to come to the rescue of the farmers. He also wanted that the drought-hit mandals be identified immediately and send a report to the Centre.
Lokesh also wanted the waiver of farm loans and pay compensation to the farmers by assessing the crop damage on a war-footing basis.
