Mumbai, Sep 28 (IANS) In a blistering attack on the Maharashtra government, the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) MLA Rohit Pawar on Monday accused the administration of turning a blind eye to a catastrophic drought sweeping the state.
Presenting detailed crop-loss statistics at the press conference here, he claimed the state faces a staggering agrarian loss exceeding Rs 77,000 crore. He argued that the prevailing agrarian breakdown, compounded by a severe rainfall deficit, has pushed rural Maharashtra into a crisis “worse than the historic drought of 1972”.
Pawar outlined how erratic monsoon patterns—exacerbated by El Niño effects—shattered hopes for a recovery after heavy July rains lulled the state machinery into complacency. Total rainfall recorded stands at 783.6 mm, reflecting a 20.50 per cent deficit overall.
Regional deficits stand at: Nashik Division: 34.30 per cent deficit, Nagpur Division: 25 per cent deficit, and Konkan Division: 9.80 per cent deficit.
According to Pawar, farmers invested Rs 95,500 crore on sowing for an anticipated production value of Rs 1,28,866 crore. Instead, massive crop failures have wiped out those investments across major kharif staples like soybean, cotton, tur (pigeon pea), and maize.
“In my home constituency of Karjat-Jamkhed alone, rainfall stands at barely 40 per cent of normal—a massive 60 per cent deficit,” Pawar noted. “Farmers haven’t even recovered their basic input costs. Their backs are broken.”
To highlight the contrast between government claims and the ground reality, Pawar placed a live video call during the press conference to an affected farmer from Jalna. The farmer shared that despite paying premiums, crop insurance payouts were completely denied, with local officials claiming the scheme had closed.
Furthermore, no state surveyors or agricultural officers had visited the fields to evaluate crop damage, he said.
Pawar slammed the state’s crop insurance execution, revealing that while farmers, the state, and the central government collectively paid Rs 2,394 crore in insurance premiums to private companies, farmers received barely Rs 1,938 crore in compensation—meaning insurance companies retained profits while farmers suffered.
Dismissing the government’s relief concessions as superficial, Pawar dissected state measures point-by-point. Calling the State Disaster Relief Fund (SDRF) aid of Rs 8,500 per hectare (capped at Rs 17,000) an “insult to farmers” when production costs reach Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,000 per acre, he demanded a minimum blanket relief of Rs 50,000 per hectare.
He characterised land revenue waivers as a gimmick providing a paltry benefit of just Rs 400 to Rs 500 per farmer.
He demanded a total waiver of college tuition fees across drought-hit districts, calling the state’s Rs 30 crore fee exemption allocation insufficient and Rs 25,000 direct cash assistance for families of landless agricultural labourers.
He further demanded to convene a dedicated session of the Maharashtra State Legislature—mirroring measures taken by neighboring Karnataka—to exclusively address drought relief, audit skyrocketing pesticide prices and investigate over 17,000 registered complaints regarding sub-standard seeds sold to farmers and clear Rs 15,000 crore in pending funds under the Krishi Samriddhi Yojana held up over the last three years.
Meanwhile, NCP SP president and former Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, in a letter to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Sunday, demanded an urgent government intervention and a 17-point relief package to assist farmers, agricultural laborers, and students following the state’s declaration of drought across 265 talukas.
Highlighting the severe agricultural distress and economic hardships faced by rural populations across affected regions, Sharad Pawar urged the administration to expand existing aid programs and implement immediate support mechanisms ahead of the upcoming festival season.
He urged the government to declare all remaining affected talukas as drought-hit and completely waive land revenue charges across the state, waive all agricultural loans and occupational credit extended to farmers, farm laborers, self-help groups (SHGs), and micro-enterprises across cooperative, nationalised, urban, and social welfare financial institutions, write off agricultural pump electricity bills completely, and strictly prohibit power disconnections or load-shedding in designated drought-affected areas and exempt affected school and college students from tuition, hostel, and mess fees.
He further called for relaxing MGNREGA norms to immediately begin local employment works within a 3 km radius of demand, delegation of immediate administrative sanctioning authority for drinking water tankers—for both citizens and livestock—directly to Tehsildars, and providing 25 kg of free food grains per family for farm laborers and agricultural households, and directly credit subsidies into bank accounts for livestock care.
He also demanded disbursement of immediate financial relief of Rs 1,00,000 per hectare for farmers and Rs 25,000 for landless agricultural labourers, extension of urgent economic aid and water tanker supplies for affected fruit orchards (banana, sugarcane, paddy), and instant release of all pending scheme dues to beneficiaries and route entire relief funds directly to Divisional Commissioners and District Collectors.
–IANS
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