Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister and Revenue Minister G. Parameshwara on Tuesday, 3 November 2026, wrote separate letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, urging the Centre to urgently sanction and release ₹22,400.58 crore in drought relief for the state. The move comes as 226 taluks across Karnataka reel from crop damage spanning 57.93 lakh hectares and estimated economic losses of ₹62,481.88 crore.

Scale of the Crisis

According to the letters, Karnataka's farmers are facing what Parameshwara described as an unprecedented crisis. Crop losses have been recorded across 226 taluks, covering 57.93 lakh hectares of agricultural land. The estimated economic losses have been pegged at ₹62,481.88 crore, a figure that underscores the severity of the drought's impact on livelihoods across the state.

Parameshwara also sought personal appointments with all three Union leaders to present Karnataka's case directly, signalling the urgency the state government attaches to the matter.

Revised SDRF/NDRF Norms and the Funding Gap

The letters reference a notification issued by the Union Home Ministry on 26 October 2026, which revised compensation norms under the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) and National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) for the period 2026-27 to 2030-31. Following the revision, Karnataka's crop damage input subsidy requirement has risen from ₹6,128.70 crore to ₹7,943.55 crore — an increase of ₹1,814.85 crore. This has pushed the state's overall drought relief demand from ₹20,585.73 crore to ₹22,400.58 crore.

While Parameshwara welcomed the Centre's decision to revise the norms, he argued that the enhancement falls well short of addressing the actual financial distress faced by farmers, particularly as agricultural input costs continue to climb and extreme weather events grow in frequency and intensity.

Why Current Compensation Rates Are Contested

Under the revised norms, compensation has been fixed at ₹11,000 per hectare for rain-fed crops, ₹22,000 per hectare for irrigated crops, and ₹30,000 per hectare for perennial crops. Parameshwara argued these figures do not reflect the actual expenditure farmers incur on seeds, fertilisers, agricultural labour, irrigation, and other essential inputs.

'Compensation norms must be in tune with agricultural costs and economic conditions prevailing in 2026. A compensation mechanism that does not adequately take into account the actual expenditure incurred by farmers in cultivating their crops and the losses suffered by them cannot ensure justice,' Parameshwara said in the letters.

Objection to Outdated Agricultural Data

A key concern raised by the Deputy Chief Minister is the continued reliance on data from the 2015-16 Agricultural Census to identify farmers eligible for drought relief. Parameshwara argued that a decade-old dataset does not accurately reflect current landholdings and agricultural circumstances, potentially excluding small and marginal farmers who may have acquired or lost land since then.

He urged the Centre to instead adopt Karnataka's FRUITS database — a state-level repository containing updated and verified farmer information — to ensure that eligible beneficiaries are not inadvertently left out of the relief framework. This is a pointed call for administrative modernisation within the national disaster response architecture.

Cooperative Federalism and the Political Dimension

Parameshwara was careful to frame the demand in the language of cooperative federalism, explicitly stating that 'political and administrative differences should not come in the way of protecting farmers' interests.' The appeal carries implicit weight: Karnataka is governed by the Congress, while the Centre is led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a dynamic that has previously complicated Centre-state fiscal transfers in India.

Linking the issue to the national vision, Parameshwara cautioned that if a single failed monsoon can 'wipe out years of hard work by farmers, exhaust their family savings and push the future of an entire generation of farmers into uncertainty,' the goal of building a developed India by 2047 would remain out of reach.

The Centre's response — and whether it grants Parameshwara the requested appointments — is now closely watched by farmer groups and opposition parties across Karnataka.