Monsoon deficiency drops to 22% but reservoirs have below or normal storage
Delhi and rain may be playing hide and seek, but monsoon has covered almost the entire country and overall monsoon deficiency has dipped to 22 per cent from 33 per cent at the start of the month.
The good news ends there. Several parts of the country are reeling under the impact of deficient rains and majority of the reservoir have reported below or normal storage. The deficient and delayed monsoon has impacted sowing. Area sown under kharif crops and it was down by 27 per cent at 234.33 lakh hectare, according to the latest Government data.
However, the sowing operation is expected to pick-up in the coming days as the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has projected good rains in July and August. Besides, the Government has announced significant hike in the minimum support price of 14 notified kharif crops.
While three -fourths of MeT department’s sub-meteorological divisions are still under the “deficient” rainfall category, according to the Central Water Commission (CWC), of the 91 major reservoirs in the country, 62 water bodies reported 80 per cent or below of normal storage.
The IMD has four divisions, which are further divided into 36 sub-divisions. Twenty-four have received “deficient” rainfall.
The deficiency was highest in east and northeast India - 36 - followed by 30 per cent in the southern peninsula.
The data also indicates that central India has received fairly good rainfall over the last week. East and northeast divisions of the IMD comprising the States of West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and all the northeastern States have reported deficient rainfall. The division has seven sub-divisions.
Of the nine sub-divisions of northwest India which comprises all the north Indian States, seven fell under the “deficient rainfall” category. The east Rajasthan sub-division received “larger excess” rainfall.
Of the ten sub-divisions of the central India division, the Kutch and Saurashtra, Marathwada and Vidarbha sub-divisions have reported “deficient rainfall”. East Madhya Pradesh has recorded excess rainfall.
The south peninsula which has ten sub-divisions has seen rainfall deficiency in seven. “The Northern Limit of Monsoon continues to pass through Barmer, Jodhpur, Sikar, Rohtak, Chandigarh, Una and Amritsar. Conditions are becoming favourable for further advance of Southwest Monsoon into remaining parts of Haryana, Punjab and some more parts of Rajasthan during next 48 hours,” the IMD said.
Meanwhile, growing of kharif crops begin with the onset of southwest monsoon, which this year arrived late delaying the sowing operation and rainfall remained deficient by 33 per cent, said the IMD data.
According to the latest sowing data released by the Agriculture Ministry, area under Kharif cultivation was only 234.33 lakh hectare till last week of the kharif season of 2019-20 crop year (July-June), as against last year’s 319.68 lakh hectare.
Rice, the main kharif crop, was sown in 52.47 lakh hectare till last week, down from 68.60 lakh hectare in the year-ago period. Less area was reported from Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, West Bengal and Himachal Pradesh, among others.