The Andhra Pradesh Kisan Congress has urged the state government to declare 624 of the state’s 688 mandals drought-affected and immediately waive outstanding loans of farmers and tenant farmers, citing widespread crop losses, water shortages and distress in rural districts.
Andhra Pradesh Kisan Congress chairman Kamana Prabhakara Rao said the government had so far classified 283 mandals as severely drought-affected and 105 as moderately affected. He alleged that this assessment did not reflect the scale of the crisis and called for a broader declaration covering the 624 mandals.
The organisation has also demanded that teams from the Agriculture and Revenue departments visit drought-affected mandals, assess conditions and submit reports. It said relief measures should be implemented urgently for farmers, agricultural labourers and livestock owners.
According to agricultural statistics cited by Rao, crops had not been sown on 10 lakh acres as of September 30. He further claimed that more than 90% of the cultivated area had been affected during the season and that over half of the sown crops had dried up. The Kisan Congress attributed the severity of the conditions largely to the El Nino effect.
The organisation said the impact was particularly severe in Rayalaseema and North Andhra. It reported that farm labourers were migrating in search of work, while livestock were facing shortages of drinking water and fodder. These effects extend the consequences of a failed agricultural season beyond cultivators, affecting rural employment, household income and the availability of basic resources in villages.
Rao called for villages to be treated as individual units while identifying drought-affected areas, rather than relying only on broader administrative classifications. The organisation said this approach would allow relief to reach communities facing different levels of crop failure and water stress within the same mandal.
The relief measures sought by the Kisan Congress include waiving existing bank loans of farmers and tenant farmers, sanctioning fresh credit and immediately releasing input subsidies. It also asked the government to support replanting with short-duration seed varieties where conditions permit.
For livestock, the organisation demanded the immediate supply of cattle fodder to villages across Rayalaseema and North Andhra. The demands place the focus on both immediate assistance and administrative assessment, with the next step being field-level surveys by Agriculture and Revenue officials and decisions by the state government on the extent of the drought declaration and relief package.