Drought affects 2.35 crore people in Andhra Pradesh, says report

Hyderabad: The AP government, in a report to the Centre, said that the drought had affected 2.35 crore people out of the state’s total population of 4.94 crore. The report comes in the wake of a meeting that AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu had with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 17 in Delhi.

The Centre had wanted a low down on the drought and steps taken by the state government for pre-monsoon water conservation besides innovative measures taken for drought mitigation.

In its report, the state government explained a detailed action plan for the conservation of rainwater and sought Rs 2,000.56 crore from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF): The Centre relea-sed only Rs 433.77 crore. The state government requested that the balance amount of the NDRF’s Rs 1,566.70 crore for the 2015 drought be released. It also said that the state government had submitted proposals worth Rs 126 crore under the Repair, Renovation and Restoration (RRR) pr-oject, which were pending with the Central Water Commission (CWC).

The state government, in its explanation about the integrated action plan for water conservation, said that within six weeks’ time, the government would complete restoration or desiltation of 49,624 water bodies, tanks, farm ponds and community ponds. The water spread area in these water bodies covers 3,17,934 hectares. The state government will construct 605,000 new farm or community ponds and 41,000 groundwater recharge structures.

Ten out of 13 districts in the state, 6,974 villages and 27,917 habitations have been affected by the drought. The state government said that all the existing 40,817 water bodies of medium irrigation we-re surveyed and an action plan prepared to restore and renovate those requiring repairs. The government said the focus would be on desilting tanks, feeder channels and field channels to restore them to their capacity.

The state government said that the Godavari and Krishna rivers had been interlinked successfully and water had been transferred to the Krishna basin through the Pattiseema lift irrigation project. The report stated that seven irrigation projects had been prioritised for early completion and to provide irrigation to the needy areas and 175 defunct lift irrigation schemes had been taken up for revival to stabilise 1.4 lakh acres.

To save the crops from water stress during prolonged dry spells, an innovative measure was taken up to provide protective irrigation through rain guns.

The state government had also entered into an agreement with Australia for improved and integrated water resource management for river basins in the state.