Black gram and other crops in vast stretches of Krishna Delta are drying up because the Telugu Desam Government did not bother to pay ₹ 120 crore for the rehabilitation and resettlement package to those living in Telangana villages that would be inundated by Pulichintala backwaters, YSR Congress president and Leader of the Opposition in the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has alleged.
Mr. Jagan interacted with farmers who had sown black gram in villages of Bapulapadu mandal in Gannavaram Assembly Constituency, near here, on Monday.
Addressing the gathering, the YSRC leader explained that the full capacity of Pulichintala Project was 45 tmcft, but the Andhra Pradesh government was able to store only 22 tmcft because there were still villages that need to be evacuated in Telangana. “The neighbouring State had been corresponding with the Andhra Pradesh government for the past two years, but the latter released only small amounts,” he said.
The maximum the State could store in Pulichintala was 28 tmcft, Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy pointed out.
The Andhra Pradesh government claimed that 40 tmcft was brought from Godavari basin with the help of Pattiseema Lift Irrigation Scheme, but then 55 tmcft had to be released into the Bay of Bengal, he pointed out.
About the plight of the black gram farmers, Mr. Jagan said that virus attacked the crop in delta for the first time because of moisture stress. Usually viral attacks were known only in the dry upland areas and never in the delta areas where there was abundant water.
The farmers in villages of Bapulapadu mandal were being forced to cultivate blackgram because they did not have enough water for cultivation of paddy. And this year, they did not even have sufficient water for blackgram. Some farmers who failed to raise three consecutive crops of blackgram had lost ₹ 25,000 per acre. But nobody had come to survey the crop damage or to give input subsidy. This was happening in these villages for the past two years. The farmers here had to sell the remnants of the blackgram crop to goat and sheep rearers for grazing at the rate of ₹ 500 an acre this year, he revealed.
Repeating what Gudiwada MLA Kodali Srivenkateswara Rao said about the completion of Pulichintala project, Mr. Jagan said the TDP government was afraid because all the credit would go to his father, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, who would be called the modern “Cotton Dora”.
