Hyderabad: The Telangana Rythu Sangam (TRS) demanded the State government to immediately conduct the assessment of crop losses and take steps for the disbursal of the compensation.

On Monday, the TRS state president and general secretary, Pothineni Sudarshan Rao and T Sagar said that thousands of acres of crops have been damaged due to untimely rains and hailstorms for the past four days. “The Telangana Rythu Sangam State Committee is demanding the government to immediately collect statistics and pay full compensation to the farmers who have suffered losses,” they urged.

The Farmers Association leader said that during the harvesting of Yasangi crops in 2024-25, “untimely rains and hailstorms that have been lashing for four days have damaged the crops. This resulted in huge losses to the farmers in North Telangana. Maize, harvested paddy, mango flowering, vegetables, sugarcane and other crops have been damaged.” Two people died due to lightning strikes. Sheep, goats and cattle have also incurred losses.

Further, in some places, the produce brought to the market got wet and was damaged.

“These untimely rains have caused serious loss to the farmers. Crops were damaged in five lakh acres. The government, which promised to provide compensation of Rs 10,000 per acre, provided only a nominal assistance of Rs 15.80 crore for 1.5 lakh acres. Not even a third of the farmers’ investment was received,” they alleged.

Once again, due to a hailstorm in Yasangi, crops were damaged in the combined Mahabubnagar, Adilabad, Karimnagar and Medak districts. “The initial estimate of the damage was announced to be Rs 11,000 crore only. However, this is not true as in some places farmers incurred loss of entire crops as they could not harvest crops. Also, 50 per cent of crops are damaged in many other locations. Natural calamity compensation has not been paid to everyone for the last decade,” they added.

Moreover, the farmers did not get the Centre-allocated natural calamities funds under the 15th Finance Commission. Farmers in Telangana state are incurring huge losses. The current Congress government has not started the crop insurance scheme. Even though they have joined the PM Fasal Bima, the farmers could not get compensation as the state government has not paid the insurance premium, the leaders alleged.