Farmers from across the district have sought better transparency in the disbursal of drought relief and have asked the district administration to publish the details of the relief amount earmarked crop and farmer-wise.
They also demanded an explanation on why the distribution of relief amount was getting delayed in the district, during the special grievances redress meeting that the district administration held for the agrarian community here on Friday.
“Though the amount was announced many months ago to offset the losses suffered by the farmers due to dry climatic conditions, the compensation package is yet to reach a large number of farmers”, claimed S. R. Madhussodhan, district secretary of Tamil Nadu Vyavasaigla Sangham.
Farmers further questioned the logic in identifying only a select number of farmers as beneficiaries for the drought-relief package, when the whole district had been identified as ‘drought-hit’. Mr. Madhusoodhan and a few other progressive farmers wanted to know why the authorities in the district had been telling that only ₹81.88 crore would be distributed as relief against the initial announcement of ₹ 134 crore.
The Agriculture department officials later clarified to The Hindu that ₹ 134 crore was earlier estimated tentatively.
“But when the final assessment was carried out following the national disaster recovery support norms, it was found that only 78,224 farmers cultivating over an expanse of 83,080 hectares in the district were eligible for the drought relief against more than one lakh farmers estimated in the beginning”, said the officials.
On the accusation of delay in disbursal of relief amount, the officials pointed out that steps were taken to electronically transfer the amount to the bank accounts of the entire beneficiaries over the last few days, except for the ones where Indian Financial System Code (IFSC) was given wrongly by the farmers.
