NEW DELHI: The central government in its report informed the Supreme Court of India that as many as 33 crore people or more than 25% of the country’s population are affected by the drought conditions, which include drinking water shortage and agricultural distress. The government said that it was releasing funds to the affected states from its disaster fund to tackle the situation.
Additional Solicitor general PS Narasimha, who has submitted the data collected from the ten drought affected Indian states before the Supreme Court bench, said Rs 7,321 crore was released on Monday under MGNREGS in addition to Rs 12,230 crore disbursed earlier this month. The solicitor general informed the Supreme Court bench that the Central government has granted more than 100 days of employment under the rural job scheme to 21 lakh households in these states.
The court was hearing a petition filed by NGO Swaraj Abhiyan, contending that the State governments were not implementing social welfare schemes like Food security Act, MGNREGA and the Centre’s drought manual effectively, in 12 Indian states despite of facing severe drought conditions.
The report submitted before the Supreme court bench comprising of Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice NV Ramana revealed that 2.55 lakh villages living in 254 districts are drought-affected. The number could be higher as Bihar and Haryana haven’t declared such crisis despite of rain shortage in several districts.
Interestingly, the Central government in its preliminary report, did not reveal the statistics of Gujarat in spite of the state government itself accepting the prevailing drought condition in more than 637 villages. Replying to the court’s question on special treatment to Gujarat, Mr Narasimha said “There is nothing behind the scene and the Gujarat figure will also be placed before court”.
In addition the Solicitor general added that the data may not be considered reliable or accurate as it was provided by the state governments taking districts as units (considering the total population of a district).
The droughts have been posing a severe problem before the governments to tackle. In a recent controversy, the Mumbai High court has ruled that the IPL matches be moved out of Maharashtra so as to save the high volumes of water being utilized for maintaining the pitches and stadia during the ongoing IPL tournament.
Of the ten Indian states, the worst hit is the Uttar Pradesh with a severe water crisis affecting 10 crore people.