Heavy rainfall, hail storm and stormy winds twice in March has largely devastated the Rabi crop in most of the districts of Uttar Pradesh. Seeing the wide scale loss of farmers, the Yogi Government has decided to procure damaged crops of wheat this year and give compensation to farmers. The rains on Friday and Saturday last damaged several thousand hectares of wheat, mustard and pulses crop in UP.
According to the officials of agriculture department in UP, as per survey in 10 districts of Agra, Bareilly, Varanasi, Lakhimpur Kheri, Unnao, Hamirpur, Jhansi, Chandauli and Prayagraj around 34137 hectare of crop has been damaged due to bad weather. This estimate has been prepared from March 15 till date. As per it crops of 1.02 lakh farmers have been affected due rain and hail storm. Worst hit were eastern districts of Varanasi with 13112 hectare crop damage and Lalitpur in Bundelkhand with 6216 hectare.
50% wheat & mustard damaged
Officials said that heavy rainfall in the last two days of March coupled with hail storm has caused damage to 50 per cent of wheat and mustard. In the early days of March the rise in temperature had affected wheat crops also. The two spells of heavy rains in March have shattered the hope of farmers completely.
₹56.38 crore compensation to farmers
As per the directives of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath compensation of Rs 56.38 crore would be given to the affected farmers. The CM has asked officials to conduct a survey of the damage caused due to bad weather in all the districts of state and provide relief to the farmers. The office of the relief commissioner of UP informed that seven persons have died in the last 24 hours due to lightning and other reasons.
On Friday and Saturday hailstorms in Hamirpur, Sambhal, Moradabad, Pilibhit, Aligarh, Bareilly, Sitapur, Unnao and Sonbhadra have damaged standing crops of wheat at large and at some places the potato crop too.
Mango crop affected as well
The officials of the horticulture department informed that mango crop too has been affected due to the bad weather. According to them, in the beginning of March the mango flowering was affected due to mercury rise and now the stormy winds and rains have badly damaged the crop. The mango growers in the fruit belt of Lucknow said that they might suffer heavy loss this season due to the bad weather.
