Lucknow, July 25 (IANS) A dry spell has led the Uttar Pradesh government to declare 20 of the state’s 70 districts as “drought-hit” while nearly three dozen more will be added to the list if the monsoon continues to remain elusive, an official said Saturday.
“While we have identified 20 districts - largely in eastern and central Uttar Pradesh - as drought-hit, we will be compelled to bring several other districts in the list if rains continue to elude us over the next few days,” a government spokesperson told IANS.

“Orders for immediate suspension of recovery of all land revenue in the drought-hit districts will be issued today (Saturday),” he added.

The decision was taken at a Friday night meeting here presided over by chief secretary Atul Kumar Gupta.

The meeting was convened hurriedly in the wake of Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar’s statement in the Rajya Sabha earlier Friday, pointing out that the Uttar Pradesh government was “inaccessible”.

While replying to a debate on the prevailing drought conditions in several parts of the country, Pawar had said: “It was impossible to gather any information in connection with the prevailing drought conditions in Uttar Pradesh because there was no way to communicate with people at the top.”

The state government has identified as many as 67 districts as among those having experienced scanty or inadequate rainfall during the current monsoon season.

Twenty of those declared “drought-hit” are Ballia, Mau, Ghazipur, Basti, Deoria, Sant Kabirnagar, Ambedkar Nagar, Jaunpur, Sultanpur, Rae Bareli, Unnao, Hardoi, Farrukhabad, Mainpuri, Kanpur (Rural), Fatehpur, Kanshi Ram Nagar, Hathras, Barielly and Kannauj.

Instructions have been issued for preparing a drought relief package that would be shortly submitted to the central government.

Meanwhile, according to weather reports, Uttar Pradesh has received only about 128 cm of rainfall since June 1 as against the expected normal rainfall of about 307 cm. In the 20 drought-hit districts, the recorded rainfall was barely 60 cm.

According to official estimates, scanty rain had adversely affected about 53 lakh hectares of paddy area, where sowing could not carried out properly on account of inadequate water availability.