Maharashtra is facing a severe drought crisis, with NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) MLA Rohit Pawar claiming that the state’s agricultural losses have crossed ₹77,000 crore and that the situation is worse than the historic 1972 drought. At a press conference, Pawar demanded immediate relief for farmers and agricultural labourers, while alleging that the government has failed to respond to the scale of the crisis.
The figures and allegations were presented by Pawar during the press conference and reported by Navbharat Times – Mumbai. He attributed the worsening conditions to erratic monsoon patterns and the impact of El Niño. According to the figures cited by him, Maharashtra recorded total rainfall of 783.6 mm, representing an overall shortfall of 20.50 per cent.
Pawar said rainfall deficits varied significantly across the state. The Nashik division recorded a shortfall of 34.30 per cent, while the Nagpur division recorded a 25 per cent deficit. The Konkan division recorded a 9.80 per cent shortfall, according to the numbers he presented.
He said farmers had spent ₹95,500 crore on sowing and expected production worth ₹1,28,866 crore. However, large-scale damage to major kharif crops, including soybean, cotton, tur and maize, had wiped out that investment, he claimed. Pawar also cited conditions in his Karjat-Jamkhed constituency, where he said rainfall had reached only 40 per cent of normal levels, leaving farmers unable to recover even their basic cultivation costs.
The MLA also used a live video call with an affected farmer from Jalna during the press conference to highlight alleged gaps between official claims and conditions on the ground. The farmer said that despite paying crop insurance premiums, compensation had been denied and local officials had told him that the scheme had been discontinued. He further alleged that no state surveyor or agriculture officer had visited the fields to assess crop damage.
Pawar criticised the implementation of crop insurance in Maharashtra. Citing figures presented at the press conference, he said farmers, the state government and the Union government had together paid ₹2,394 crore in premiums to private insurance companies, while farmers received approximately ₹1,938 crore in compensation. He argued that the arrangement had benefited insurers while leaving farmers to bear the losses.
He demanded a one-time relief payment of at least ₹50,000 per hectare. Pawar described the State Disaster Response Fund assistance of ₹8,500 per hectare, capped at ₹17,000, as inadequate when cultivation costs had reached ₹50,000 to ₹60,000 per acre. He also criticised the waiver of land revenue, saying it provided individual farmers with only about ₹400 to ₹500 in relief.
Among his other demands were a complete waiver of college tuition fees in drought-affected districts and direct cash assistance of ₹25,000 for families of landless agricultural labourers. Pawar said the ₹30 crore allocated by the state for fee concessions was insufficient for the scale of the crisis.
He also called for a special session of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, citing Karnataka’s handling of drought-related discussions as an example. The proposed session, he said, should examine drought relief, rising pesticide prices, more than 17,000 complaints concerning allegedly substandard seeds and the release of ₹15,000 crore in pending funds under the Agriculture Prosperity Scheme, which he said had been held up for three years.
The report records Pawar’s claims and demands; the supplied material does not include an independent government response or confirmation of the figures. The next step sought by him is a state-level political and administrative discussion through a special Assembly session focused on drought relief and agricultural losses.
