10L acre wheat damaged in Haryana

CHANDIGARH: The rains and hailstorms in March and April left a trail of destruction across Haryana's wheat fields and, according to a special survey conducted by the state government, crop in over 10 lakh acres was destroyed.
Wheat in 2.4 lakh acres suffered 100% loss while around 8 lakh acre crop was damaged partially. This year, Haryana's farmers had sown wheat in around 60 lakh acres."If all crops are counted, the area of damaged crop is more than 13 lakh acres of the total 65 lakh acres," state agriculture minister Om Prakash Dhankar told TOI on Friday.
"It means the adverse whether has damaged crops in 20% of total cultivated area in the state," he added.
Palwal is the worst affected district in the state, with rains damaging crops in 2.58 lakh acres. Farmers in Bhiwani, Rohtak, Jind, Gurgaon, Faridabad and Jhajjar have also suffered huge losses.
"It's for the first time in the history of Haryana that the state government will have to spend Rs 2,000 crore to help out farmers for only one crop season," said Dhankar.
The government would disburse around Rs 1,100 crore to farmers as compensation, apart from other reliefs like interest-free loan and electricity bill waiver for agriculture purposes.
Dayanand Poonia, a farmer from Matani village in Bhiwani district, says, "I had sown gram in 7 acres of land but the hailstorms destroyed the entire crop. I got only 3 quintals of gram that too is of poor quality."
The state has witnessed deaths of over a dozen farmers after the crop damage.
District damage to wheat crop
Palwal: 2.58 lakh acres
Hisar: 1.28 lakh acres
Rohtak: 1 lakh acres
Mahendergarh: 95,531 acres
Bhiwani: 67,413 acres
Jind: 67,174 acre