‘Farmers should fight unitedly for their righteous share in water’

Ongole: Unless the Prakasam district farmers under the Nagarjuna Sagar Right Canal unite and agitate for their righteous share of irrigation water, they should blame themselves for not acting in time when their crops wither away, announced the speakers at the conference organised by the Prakasam Zilla Abhivruddhi Vedika on the failure of government to provide irrigation water to farmers at the tail-end of Nagarjuna Sagar Right Canal, on Saturday.

The speakers including the retired engineer-in-chief BSN Reddy, president of Andhra Pradesh Raitanga Samakhya Yerneni Nagendranath, president of Prakasam Zilla Abhivruddhi Vedika Chunduri Rangarao, former secretary of Andhra Pradesh Mahila Samakhya K Aruna, Kisan Congress district president Vallamreddy Rajagopala Reddy and others observed that the Prakasam district farmers at the tail-end of the Nagarjuna Sagar Right canal should get 60 TMC of water in the 132 TMC of allocation to the project for an ayacut of 4.42 lakh acres.
 
As the project is full in September 2018, the government announced that it will release 53 TMC of water to only 3.65 acres in the district. In this land, it assured enough water for the farmers of 80,000 acres for paddy and the others could get water for wetting only. 

By the time the canal is closed in February second week, the government is able to supply enough water to only 20 acres of paddy and the remaining is withered away due to non-availability of water.

The speakers questioned the government to whom they should find responsible for the failure for not providing water, even though the project is full at a promising time.
 
They alleged that the government failed to supply the righteous share of water to farmers, but used the water to divert to other projects for its political mileage. 

They demanded the government to announce Rs 25,000 per acre as a relief to farmers in tail-end of Nagarjuna Sagar Right canal for their loss of crop and distribute it immediately.