Maharashtra govt slept on drought report: Yogendra Yadav
“We wasted no time in alerting the Maharashtra chief minister in October about the steps needed to be taken for tackling drought on a priority basis. Six months later, we find that the situation has only worsened instead of easing,” he said.
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Yogendra Yadav, member of the working committee of Swaraj Abhiyan accused the Maharashtra government on Monday of doing little despite being aware of the drought situation in Marathwada six months back. “In October last year, we had written a letter to Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis informing him about the worsening situation in Marathwada, but the government did little at the moment,” Yadav said at the JS Karandikar memorial lecture organised by Pune Union of Working Journalists on Monday.
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Yadav said that he and his team had visited Nanded, Parbhani, Latur, Osmanabad, Beed, Aurangabad, Jalna, Solapur and Jalgaon districts as part of their Samvedna Yatra in October 2015 and came face to face with the frightening scenario as a result of lack of rains for the last two to three years. “We wasted no time in alerting the Maharashtra chief minister in October about the steps needed to be taken for tackling drought on a priority basis. Six months later, we find that the situation has only worsened instead of easing,” he said.
Yadav said that extreme weather conditions will take place more frequently due to climate change, but the government must frame a policy vis-a-vis changing cropping pattern, water conservation, reducing wastage of water and implementing insurance scheme for farmers. Citing the MNREGA report of Maharashtra for 2015-16 where no work was done in 6,352 of the 19,516 drought-affected gram panchayats, Yadav said that in Maharashtra, sugarcane cultivation is allowed in scarcity zones which also have water bottling plants. On restructuring of loans, Yadav alleged that only Rs 5,000 crore was done for farmers. “But over Rs 3.5 lakh crore loan was restructured for corporates, though the sector did not face any difficult time,” he said.
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