Maharashtra considers declaring drought in 19 more talukas

Mumbai: After being pushed by public representatives, the state government, which has already declared drought in 74% of the state, is considering adding another 19 talukas to the list after a survey on 20% of five major crops in the taluka to assess losses. The list mainly includes constituencies to which ruling party MLAs belong.

A decision will be taken after the survey (ground-truthing), which is usually conducted on 10% of the sample.

The list includes three talukas in

Nanded, the constituency of former chief minister and

BJP politician Ashok Chavan; three talukas in Chandrapur, the turf of BJP MLAs Kishor Jorgewar and Sudhir Mungantiwar; one taluka in Wardha, from where BJP politician and minister of state for home Pankaj Bhoyar hails.

Also part of the list are four talukas in Gondia, from where BJP MLAs Vinod Agarwal and Sanjay Hanmantrao Puram hail. The list includes Patan in Satara, the constituency of

Shiv Sena MLA and cabinet minister Shambjuraj Desai. It includes two talukas in Bhandara, from where Shiv Sena MLA Narendra Bhondekar hails.

Three talukas from Nashik, from where NCP minister Chhagan Bhujbal hails, are on the list. The constituencies include Chandwad (BJP MLA Daulatrao Aher), Trimbakeshwar (NCP MLA Hiraman Khoskar) and Niphad (NCP MLA Dilip Bankar).

The list includes Shirala in Sangli, from where BJP MLA Satyajit Deshmukh hails.

So far, drought has been declared in 265 of 358 talukas in the state. At the first cabinet meeting after the declaration, several ministers, including Bhujbal, Shambhuraj Desai and Girish Mahajan had spoken out about other areas which needed to be included in the declaration.

In the drought declared so far, the worst-affected region is Vidarbha (comprising Nagpur and Amravati revenue divisions) and Marathwada (now known as Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar). In Vidarbha, 95 talukas are affected, followed by Marathwada (74), North Maharashtra (49), Western Maharashtra (35) and Konkan (12).

The worst-affected districts are Yavatmal in Vidarbha (16 talukas), followed by Jalgaon in North Maharashtra (15 talukas), and Nanded in Marathwada, Ahilyanagar in North Maharashtra and Amravati and Nagpur in Vidarbha (14 talukas each).