The intermittent rains lashing Bastar division for the last four days have not only disrupted the normal life here but also badly affected the standing paddy crop waiting for harvest besides bringing the election campaign for the first phase to a standstill.
Notably, due to low pressure area developed over Karnataka forming a trough over Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, heavy to moderate rains are lashing Bastar as well as other parts of the state continuously for the last four days. While the school going children and service class people suffered great inconvenience, it also affected paddy harvesting badly. Due to continuous rains ripen paddy, and Maize crops have fallen on the ground and there are chances of heavy loss to farmers as they are not able to harvest the crops specially.
Though the state government has started procurement of Paddy on minimum support price from October 21, but in the last six days not a single grain of paddy reached any procurement centres in Bastar division. Meanwhile, as the weather experts forecast continuation of the situation for next two–three days, people were concerned about preparations for Diwali as white washing, cleaning work was greatly affected.
Most significant impact of the rains was also seen on electioneering for the first phase of Assembly polls scheduled for November 11 in which 12 constituencies of Bastar and six of Rajnandgaon will vote to elect their representatives. Due to continuous rains while the campaigning has been stalled, it also hampered flight of helicopters due to which security forces scheduled to be sent to remote areas to man the polling booths could not be dispatched to their destination as the entire electioneering work in Bastar came to a standstill.