Jharkhand,11 districts of Bengal declared drought-hit

advisory council.

A fortnight ago,the government had declared only 12 districts as drought-hit before adding four more to the list a couple of days ago.

All the district administrations have been asked to speed up relief measures,the officials said.

Meanwhile,11 districts in West Bengal were declared drought-affected. State government has sanctioned Rs 50 crore to help ease the situation.

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has written to Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar to send a study team to assess the state of affairs here.

The decision to declare the districts drought-hit was taken at a high-level meeting chaired by Bhattacharjee at the Writers’

Buildings,Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta said.

He said the districts had nearly 30 per cent less-than-normal rainfall causing the drought situation.

“There has been severe damage to the kharif crop in 11 districts,” he said,adding the government was seriously considering converting farmers’ short-term loans into long-term.

“Subsidy for irrigable areas will be Rs 4,000 crore and that for non-irrigable areas Rs 2,000 crore,” Dasgupta announced.

He,however,ruled out any food scarcity due to the drought situation in the 11 districts and promised to take stern action in case there were attempts to create artificial scarcity of foodgrains.

The dought-hit districts are Purulia,Bankura,Murshidabad,Birbhum,Burdwan (known as the rice-bowl of West Bengal),Hooghly,North and South 24 Parganas,West Midnapore,Nadia and Malda.

He has also written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to immediately release Rs 1,400 crore under the NREGS that is due to Bengal.