Telangana seeks Centre to allocate 10 lakh metric tonnes urea

Hyderabad: The Telangana government appealed to the Centre for an additional allocation of urea over and above 10 lakh metric tonnes for the current kharif season.

After meeting Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers D V Sadananda Gowda, State Agriculture Minister Singireddy Niranjan Reddy said the sale of urea had seen a substantial jump this Kharif season as compared to that of the last year due to an increase in acreage under cultivation in the state. He requested for speeding up the supply of urea to Telangana. The minister said the cultivation in the state had gone up to 1.41 crore acres as against 1.25 crore acres during the last agriculture season. Farmers, he said, were cultivating an additional extent of 8.5 lakh acres of horticultural crops. The state received the highest rainfall in the last five decades. This has given fillip to agriculture leading to an increase in demand for fertilisers.

He said the farmers in the state had utilised 3.5 lakh metric tonnes of urea during the third week of August last year. As against that, the demand of usage has gone up to 7 lakh metric tonnes. The Centre had allocated 10 lakh metric tonnes to the state and out of that it was yet to receive 2.5 lakh metric tonnes of urea for the month of August. He also sought the Centre to increase the allocation of the quota of urea.

Gowda said that the Department of Fertilisers was monitoring the urea supplies to the states very closely.

There was a day-to-day interaction among the officials and every issue highlighted is being addressed on top priority. He said necessary directions had already been issued to ensure the supplies as per the agreed plan. He requested the Telangana government to ensure that data about sales, availability and stocks are updated timely on the dashboard so as to get real picture about the availability of fertilizers on real-time basis. He assured that the supply would be strengthened.