The Cauvery water dispute and drought have impacted the agricultural sector in Mandya district, with paddy crops on at least 50,000 acres showing indications of withering.
The crops in both the Cauvery and the Hemavati river basins are at the ear-head emergence and milky stages. They now badly need water to reach the harvesting stage. But water for irrigation was stopped on Wednesday following depletion of level in the Krishnaraja Sagar (KRS) reservoir.
Only six days
The Irrigation Department had been releasing water on an on-and-off basis, and this was stopped a few weeks ago. It started discharging water continuously on November 11 to save the crops. But before the water could reach the tail-end region, the flow into canals was stopped as the level in the KRS reservoir plummeted to 77 ft against its full level of 124.80 ft.
The move will drastically hit paddy production this kharif season, say officials in the Department of Agriculture.
The total cultivation area in the district is around 2.5 lakh hectares. Agricultural activities were taken up only on around 1.33 lakh hectares during the kharif season. Of this, paddy seedlings were transplanted in around 40 per cent of the land. Around 50,000 acres of paddy crops are withering, the officials told The Hindu .
While 88,000 hectares are irrigated by the KRS reservoir, around 16,000 hectares are irrigated by the Hemavati reservoir.
Shambhunahalli Suresh, district president, Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha, said the farming community had been badly hit by the escalation of the Cauvery water-sharing dispute. This prompted the State government to stop water for irrigation, he said.
According to him, supply of water for at least 15 more days could save the crops.
