While unseasonal rains continue to haunt farmers of Siddipet during the Yasangi season this year, damage assessments by agriculture officials are making them suffer more. The Agriculture Department, which declared that crops were damaged on 9,150 acres due to rains and hailstorms on April 10, has amended the statistics and reduced it to 4,686 acres now at a time when the government was preparing to release the input subsidy.

During March, April and May, when the crops were ready to be harvested, rains, hailstorms and strong winds lashed the district six times, forcing agriculture officials to carry out the crop loss enumeration six times. However, agriculture officials, who declared crop loss on 9,150 acres on April 10, reduced the figure to 4,686 acres, leaving farmers in shock.

Officials said they would consider the crop damaged if the crop had fallen more than 33 per cent. Rains had lashed the district on March 21, April 3, 10, and 21 and May 1 and 4. However, they have put the crop loss in the first five incidents together at just 5,877 acres. Again, officials declared that crops were damaged on 9,368 acres due to rains on May 4 after preliminary enumeration.

However, the farmers feared that officials would again amend this number excluding their names from the beneficiary list. However, there was no mechanism in place to assess the loss the farmers, who brought the paddy to procurement centres, suffered.

Meanwhile, the BRS is preparing to highlight the agriculture department’s failures on how farmers were being cheated by excluding their names from the beneficiary list. The BRS see it as an attempt to reduce the burden on the State exchequer.

Source - https://telanganatoday.com