"Worst in 150 years": Kharge writes to Modi, Shah as Karnataka drought grinds 31 lakh farming families

NEW DELHI: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has written directly to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah seeking their "personal and urgent intervention" in what he calls one of Karnataka's gravest drought situations in recent years — potentially the worst in 150 years. Sharing his October 1 letter on X on Saturday, Kharge said the state faced a 58 per cent rainfall deficiency as of September, with widespread crop losses and acute distress among lakhs of farming families. Karnataka has formally sought ₹3,705.30 crore in assistance under the State and National Disaster Response Fund framework against estimated losses of ₹18,748.23 crore. "Drought relief is a humanitarian imperative and ought not to be governed by political differences between the Centre and State," Kharge wrote, asking that assistance be released "on merit and with the utmost urgency, uninfluenced by political considerations". The letter places five concrete demands before the Centre: declaration of drought and an immediate ground assessment; a central team deputed specifically to Kalyana Karnataka "without further delay" to verify the damage on the ground; sanction and release of the full ₹3,705.30 crore "without arbitrary reduction"; input subsidy calculated on Karnataka's updated Bhoomi land records rather than the outdated 2015-16 Agriculture Census, so no eligible farmer is excluded; and treatment of the 11 additional taluks now undergoing ground-truthing as part of a single continuing drought event. Kharge also sought enhanced support for drinking-water security and the cost of substitute power, citing historically low reservoir levels in the Cauvery and hydel catchments. More than 31 lakh farming families face distress, and hundreds of taluks stand declared drought-hit, with more qualifying as the Kharif season's weekly assessments continue. The intervention follows a familiar script. Karnataka has repeatedly accused the Centre of treating disaster relief as a political weapon — the 2024 drought row ended with the state government approaching the Supreme Court over delayed aid. Kharge's letter is an attempt to get ahead of that history: the state's memorandum is on the Prime Minister's desk before the fields turn to dust. Behind the figures lies the machinery of denial. Using the 2015-16 Census to decide who counts as a farmer a decade later is how bureaucracies manufacture exclusions; Kharge's insistence on the updated Bhoomi records is a demand that the actually-existing farmer — tenant, smallholder, marginal cultivator — be visible to the relief system at all. For the lakhs waiting on rain that never came, the arithmetic is simpler. Timely assistance, Kharge wrote, would provide "sustenance, fodder, water and livelihood security to millions of our affected citizens". The question now is whether the Centre responds with the urgency the letter demands — or with the indifference Karnataka says it has learned to expect.