75% of promised crop damage relief is from Central funds: BJP

Hyderabad: The Telangana government was disingenuous in claiming that it will pay Rs 10,000 per acre as relief on its own to the farmers who suffered crop losses following heavy rains in the state, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said on Thursday.

“If one goes by the extent of area of 2,22,500 acres that saw crop damages, the total compensation promised by the government works out to Rs 222.50 crore. Of this, Rs 166.69 crore actually comes from the Centre in the form of State Disaster Response Funds, while Rs 55.56 crore will be provided by the Telangana government,” BJP official spokesperson Kishore Poreddy said.

 By claiming that the state will not approach the Centre for assistance in this regard, and saying that the Telangana government will provide the relief amounts, the Chief Minister yet again displayed his penchant for maximum politics and minimum governance, he remarked.

The orders issued by the Revenue Department following the relief announcement by the Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao state that, “the SDRF component as per NDMA norms shall be utilized from the SDRF funds and the remainder will be provided by the state government.” As per the SDRF and NDRF norms, the Central government contributes 75% of SDRF allocation for general category states of which Telangana is one. For special category states or Union Territories, the Central share in the SDR funds stands at 90 per cent.

 The SDRF amounts released by the Centre to the state are cumulative, in the sense that unused funds from a previous years or years, need not be surrendered back to the Centre. The state has around Rs 1,000 crore in SDRF amount it received as on February 24 this year, and it shows that the state could have done the same, as it promised on Thursday, during the previous such crop damage episodes, he said.