BENGALURU: The Karnataka government on Saturday approached the Supreme Court seeking direction to the Centre to release the drought relief funds, Rs 18,171 crore, due for the state.
“After exhausting all our options we have exercised our statutory right under Article 32 of Constitution with a writ petition as the Centre has even violated the Disaster Management Act 2005. The plea is likely to be listed for hearing after one week as the court is on vacation”, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said.
It is a second such move after CM Siddaramaiah, along with Congress legislators and MPs from the state, had staged a protest in the national capital in the recent past over the issue of the state being allegedly denied its due share of tax.
Not getting drought relief under National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) from the Centre even after the Inter Ministerial Central Team (IMCT), that visited the state in October 2023, submitting its report to the Centre five months ago, resulted in the state government to confront the Centre again.
Siddaramaiah claimed that despite meeting the Prime Minister in December 2023 with the request, no action was taken. Union minister Amit Shah had promised to chair the high power committee meeting on drought relief but did not do so.
Addressing a press conference, Siddaramaiah said the state government has knocked on the SC’s door with a ‘prayer’ to give a direction to the Centre to immediately release the funds for the drought relief under NDRF. Even as the timing of the move has been coinciding with the Lok Sabha polls Siddaramaiah maintained that “seeking for justice cannot be an election issue”.
He claimed the state government on its part has successfully tackled the drought by distributing Rs 2,000 each to 33,44,000 farmers by releasing Rs 650 crore from state’s treasury.
“We are in a federal system. We have declared drought in 223 taluks out of 240 taluks in the state. Crops have been lost in an area of 48 lakh hectares. We had submitted a memorandum three times in a row. But so far the Centre has not given even a single penny of the state’s share”, the CM said.
In October, a central team visited the state and according to the rule a decision should be taken about providing drought relief within a month of the IMCT report, he said.
“There is a requirement of Rs 4600 crore to give as input subsidy to the farmers. According to the Act, in such a situation, the money should have been released without delay. But we have not received NDRF funds even after five months. So we had to knock on the door of the Supreme Court with no way out,”the CM said.