Hyderabad, August 03: The state government woke up late to the severity of the crop holiday in East and West Godavari districts and launched a fire fighting exercise.
The state government woke up late to the severity of the crop holiday in East and West Godavari districts and launched a fire fighting exercise.The Chief Minister, Mr N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, had to intervene to avoid a major embarrassment to the government — migration of agriculture labourers from the delta area of the rice rich coastal districts for the first time in independent India.After announcing the launch of Rs.50 crore works under NREGP in 13 mandals, the Chief Minister on Tuesday directed the rural development commissioner, Ms Jayalakshmi, to monitor effective implementation of the scheme.The government which took light of the crop holiday in about one lakh acres woke up only after the Telugu Desam sent a delegation from the party headquarters and launched an attack against the former. The issues is snowballing into a political controversy with the YSR Congress chief, Mr Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, touring the areas where the crop holiday is declared on August 6 and the TD chief Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu, scheduled to visit the next day. Ironically, the officials concerned have misled the Chief Minister by giving a twist to the crop holiday. The farmers in the two districts, particularly those from Konaseema announced two months ago that they would declare crop holiday.The farmers’ organisations have been citing the government’s failure to ensure Minimum Support Price and delay in release of water for Kharif 2011 as reasons for the crop holiday. The agriculture department officials, however, briefed the Chief Minister that the farmers did not declare any crop holiday but were trying to reschedule their cropping pattern.The officials told the CM that the farmers’ real intention was to avoid crop loss due to cyclone in November. They even said the farmers were willing to advance their rabi crop to December-January and got an approval from the Chief Minister for making arrangements in this regard.“It is incorrect to say that we are looking at reschedule of rabi. In no way can farmers avoid loss due to natural calamities as cyclones come even in December and not just in November alone as claimed by the officials,” pointed out Mr V. Musalaiah, a farmer leader in Konaseema.