Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has demanded a Rs 500-crore special package from the Union government for relief to calamity-affected farmers in the State. Earlier, Chouhan had sought an appointment with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Since he could not meet him, he submitted a letter in this regard to the Prime Minister's office.
Earlier, he wrote wrote letters to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde. In the letters, Chouhan had said that the State had witnessed spells of rain and hailstorm between January 4 and March 17, 2013. This had caused loss to crops on 7.74 lakh hectare in 13,445 villages of 40 districts.
Besides, 29 persons had lost their lives and 200 cattleheads had perished. These spells of natural calamity had caused loss of about Rs 2,000 crore. Assessment is still underway and figures of estimates of losses might rise further. The Chief Minister said that relief was provided to the affected farmers under the State Disaster Relief Fund (SDRF), but this relief would fall short in view of the quantum of loss. Therefore, a Rs 500-crore special package should be given in addition to relief given under this head. The Chief Minister said the Central government norms allowed relief distribution only in cases of crop losses of more than 50 per cent, while farmers in the loss category of 25 to 50 per cent were excluded. SDRF should also make provision for relief in cases of crop losses between 25 and 50 per cent, he said.
The Chief Minister said the SDRF norms were not realistic and therefore, the State government had recently increased the relief for crop loss by almost 20 per cent on prevailing rates. This is 15 per cent higher that Union government's norms. The existing GOI norms for relief are not based on current value of crops. It has been estimated by Agriculture department that different crops yield between Rs 50,000 and Rs 2 lakh per hectare. Therefore, it is requested that the Union Government's norms may be revised to make them more realistic.
The Chief Minister said wherever water was available, farmers might be provided a kit for summer crop of pulses from the money available under SDRF. He also pleaded food grains at BPl prices to the farmers in the affected areas for 6 months. Accordingly, the Union Government should release 113820 MT of food grains at BPl prices to assist the farmers in tiding over the distress. The Chief Minister said the State government was taking upon itself the responsibility of defraying the interest burden for medium term conversion loan. He urged the Union government to provide loan restructuring facility for those farmers whose losses fell in 25-50 per cent category.