Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) working president K.T. Rama Rao visited Mushampalli village of Nalgonda on Monday and interacted with farmers including Ganneboina Mallaiah and Borla Ram Reddy, who are known for sinking several borewells to protect their standing crops during the Statehood movement.
Mr. Mallaiah said they have incurred huge losses this season as the crops cultivated had gone dry following scarcity of water for irrigation and his efforts to save the crop by sinking new borewells had also proved futile.
The farmers told the BRS leader that they were facing drinking water and irrigation problems for the first time since 2014. He stated that the present drought condition was not caused by nature but due to the “inefficient” Congress government.
Mr. Rama Rao alleged that the government had enacted a ‘drama’ by showcasing the Kaleshwaram project as a failure and not filling the reservoirs/irrigation tanks linked to it. But, ahead of party president K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s scheduled visit to Karimnagar district on April 6 to console farmers who have suffered crop loss due to lack of water for irrigation, the government had started pumping water from Gayatri (Laxmipur) and Nandi (Nandi Medaram) pump houses to supply water to Karimnagar.
“Till yesterday, they had been saying that the Kaleshwaram project was a total failure but today they are lifting ater with the same ‘bahubali’ pumps. As long as KCR was the chief mMinister, even tail-end areas of Nagarjunasagar were supplied water, but this season even the upper reaches have not been given water resulting in withering of crops cultivated with huge investment,” Mr. Rama Rao said.
Farmer Ram Reddy explained that the farming community was in dire straits and he had to sink six borewells during the last four months while he did not have to sink even one borewell in the past 10 years.
Mr. Rama Rao said the Congress government had allowed the standing crops to go dry with a cheap idea of blaming the previous BRS government and Mr.Chandrasekhar Rao. He demanded that the government extend a relief of ₹25,000 per acre to all farmers whose crops had withered due to lack of water for irrigation as the present drought conditions were the “result of inaction of the government” to provide even the available water.
