Express News Service By

BHUBANESWAR: The Centre on Wednesday approved Rs 815 crore as drought assistance to Odisha which reeled under a spate of farmer suicides over crop loss and indebtedness induced by a prolonged dry spell in the last kharif season.

The high level committee (HLC), chaired by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, met at Delhi and approved assistance to the tune of Rs 2550 crore from National Disaster Relief Fund (NDRF) for three States including Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh besides Odisha.

The HLC examined the proposals based on the report of the inter-ministerial teams of the Centre which had visited the States to assess the drought situation.

Confirming that the Centre has approved Rs 815 crore towards drought assistance to Odisha, Special Relief Commissioner Pradipta Mohapatra said, the Government is looking into the sanction. The Central team, he said, had recommended Rs 1013.65 crore to the HLC.

The Central team, which visited four most affected districts during the first week of December last year, had found the situation arising out of drought critical and expressed that immediate mitigation measures were required.

The assistance approved by the Centre may have come short of the expectations of the State Government which had submitted two interim memoranda seeking an assistance of Rs 2199.06 crore in November last year stating that over 13.41 lakh hectare of crop area in 215 blocks of 26 districts sustained crop loss of 33 per cent and more. In the first memorandum, the State sought Rs 1687 crore whereas in a subsequent one, an additional Rs 511 crore demand was placed.

Predictably, the drought assistance left ruling Biju Janata Dal unhappy. Party spokesperson Pratap Keshari Deb said, the Centre has approved the assistance without giving any consideration to the parameters specified by the State.

In the interim memorandum, the State Government had mentioned that the total requirement of fund towards agriculture input subsidy alone is Rs 928 crore while another Rs 912 crore was required for re-phasing short-term kharif crop loans to long term.

“None of these parameters has been given a thought while approving the interim assistance. The State Government will shortly submit the final memorandum and we hope the Centre will walk the talk then,” Deb said.

Sources in the SRC office said, the final financial memorandum is expected to be submitted by January 15. “The crop cutting experiments are over and reports are being compiled by the districts. As soon as we have the final reports on crop loss, the memorandum will be submitted to the Centre,” a senior officer said.

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Minister Radha Mohan Singh, Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog Arvind Panagariya and Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi attended the HLC which also approved Rs 433.77 crore for Andhra Pradesh and Rs 1304.52 crore for Uttar Pradesh to tackle drought. The panel will meet next week to take a decision on Telangana.