Comments
The Agriculture Ministry has raised its estimates of the area affected by unseasonal rainfall and hailstorm between February-end and early April.
The revised figure on the basis of State-wise data has more than doubled from the April 16 estimate of 93.82 lakh hectares (lh) to189.81 lakh hectares (lh) as of April 24.
“The change is mainly because of the change in data with reference to Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar. The revised data is based on the information provided by State governments,” said an official statement.
This is the sixth report published by the Ministry and the figures have deviated significantly for the three States mentioned, particularly for UP, where the damage estimate has increased from 29.64 lh in the fifth report to 95.17 lh.
For Rajasthan, the total area is now estimated to be 30.57 lh, up from 16.89 lh in the fifth report, while for Bihar it increased to 14.58 lh from just 1.86 lh estimated in almost each of the previous five reports.
The ‘Agrarian Crisis’ debate was taken up in the Rajya Sabha on Monday and Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh provided the Upper House the revised figures.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.