Amaravati, July 27 (IANS) After elephants trampled to death another farmer in Andhra Pradesh’s Chittoor district, Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan directed officials to regularly track the routes of elephant herds and alert farmers.
Pawan Kalyan, who is also the state Forest and Environment Minister, expressed grief over the death of a farmer in an attack by an elephant herd.
On learning about the tragic death of farmer Ramakrishna Raju, a farmer in Kothuru village in Chittoor district, the Deputy Chief Minister gathered details from Forest Department officials about the incident.
He directed that routes of elephant herds be tracked regularly and that prior information be provided to farmers in those areas.
Pawan Kalyan also instructed the Forest Department and district administration to console the family of the farmer and provide compensation.
The 45-year-old farmer had gone to his fields. When he did not return home till late at night, the family members went searching for him. They found him dead in the fields.
This is the second such incident in the district in the last month. A 60-year-old farmer was killed by a wild elephant near Nagamvandlapalli village last month.
A herd of approximately 15 elephants has been active in the region for the past three months, repeatedly damaging agricultural land.
Despite efforts by the Forest Department to prevent such incidents, wild elephants continue to threaten both human lives and crops.
The latest incident has triggered fresh concerns over the increasing frequency of wild elephant intrusions in the undivided Chittoor district.
According to forest officials, wild elephant attacks have claimed the lives of around 25 people in the region since 2011.
The government recently doubled the compensation for victims’ families from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 10 lakh. Between 2015 and 2024, crops over 203 acres were damaged by wild elephants.
Locals said that despite the presence of two trained kumki elephants and the recent procurement of additional elephants from Karnataka, the Forest Department has not utilised them effectively to deal with the menace of wild elephants.
–IANS
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