PATNA: Amidst fear of drought, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar on Monday said he would once again convene a meeting of all concerned departments on July 31 to review the prevailing drought-like situation in the state and if the ratio of rainfall did not improve by then, the state government would take all necessary steps to provide ‘maximum-possible’ assistance to farmers.

Addressing a function after launching online transfer of diesel subsidy amount in the bank accounts of farmers at the CM secretariat here, Nitish said even today around 76% people of the state are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood.

He said the state government was very serious and alert in view of the prevailing situation and necessary steps were being taken to provide different sorts of assistance to farmers in case of full-fledged drought. “I have asked officials that there shall be no dearth of funds to meet the challenges of disaster because I strongly believe that disaster victims have the first right over the state government’s treasury,” Nitish said.

Agreeing with deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi’s suggestion, CM further directed the official to make such a provision that once a farmer is registered with a state government’s agency, he/ she would be able to get benefits of all other agricultural schemes of the state government based on the unique identification created from the same registration.

Earlier, Sushil Modi in his address, suggested that instead of registering farmers separately for different schemes, the officials should create a unique identification number of the beneficiary farmers based on their registration in the first scheme. He said the state has this season reported 48% deficit in rainfall.

Altogether 1,100 registered farmers were on Monday provided diesel subsidy amount in their bank account through online transfer. “Earlier, the farmers had to wait for a period of three months to get diesel subsidy amount, but now through online transfer process, they would be able to get within 25 days,” CM said.

Earlier on Sunday, the state government hiked subsidy on diesel by Rs 10 a litre to Rs 50 for farmers in view of the drought-like situation prevailing in most parts of the state.

