Drought-relief proposal being sent to Centre: CM Fadnavis

Mumbai: Drought-affected parts of Maharashtra will receive financial help from the Union government once a team from Centre visits such regions.

A proposal is being sent to the Centre by the state government seeking financial aid to tackle drought. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Monday said that once the Centre receives the proposal, it would send a team to review the situation in the state. After getting a report from the team, the Centre can offer financial aid.

Mr Fadnavis said that the Central government extends its help to sev-ere and medium drou-ght-affected tehsils. Ho-wever, there are few teh-sils that have experienced less than 75 per ce-nt rains and, as a result, they do not satisfy the parameters of the drought manual.

On the question of the water crisis in the state during the summer, Mr Fadnavis said big dams have water storage whi-le the medium and small dams don’t have water storage. Water can be br-ought to small and medium dams through big dams.  

He said 49.5 lakh farmers have benefited from the state’s farm loan waiver scheme. Out of Rs 21,000 crore, which has been sanctioned for waiving farm loans,  Rs 18,500 crore has been credited to the bank accounts of the farmers.

He also claimed that there is no record of the farmers who had benefited during the Congress-NCP regime.