BHUBANESWAR: Even though the Agriculture department has received reports from all districts on Kharif crops damage due to incessant rains coupled with floods, the State government is not ready to share the same for procedural issues.
Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Minister Rarendra Pratap Swain took stock of the crop situation in the State at a meeting here on Monday. The Minister was told that the crop loss reports received by the department from districts are not final as modalities for loss assessment have not been followed.
As per the procedure laid down by the Revenue and Disaster Management for special relief, there are two modes of crop loss assessment - through eye estimation in case of localised disaster and through crop cutting experiment in case a large geographical area is affected by the natural calamity is large.
“It will not be prudent for the department to talk about the actual loss as the office of the Special Relief Commissioner is the competent authority to decide the crop loss and announce agricultural subsidy and other assistance to the farmers from the Disaster Response Fund,” sources familiar with the discussions at the meeting told this paper.
Crop situation reports from some of the districts are patchy as they were compiled in a haste. Many districts have not mentioned the loss of horticultural and vegetable crops as the Minister asked the department to collect crop loss reports from districts by August 27, the sources maintained.
While it will take time to assessment of actual crop loss, the sources admitted that there have been wide variations in the area under inundation and crops affected. A preliminary report of the department said that 1.7 lakh hectares of crop area has been affected by the flood.