Swarms Of Desert Locusts Attack Gurugram

Jun 27, 2020, 14:06 IST

GURUGRAM: A swarm of locust has hit Gurugram and is likely to enter Delhi either by Saturday evening or Sunday morning. Amit Khatri, Gurugram Deputy Commissioner said that the locusts are flying across the city West to East due to the steady wind and they will most likely enter Delhi. He further added that chemicals are being sprayed through vehicle-mounted pumps set in the rural areas.

On Friday, the administration warned the public about the locust attack and urged them to keep their windows shut as a safety measure. The administration also asked the people to make sounds by beating utensils so that the locusts don't settle on green vegetation and destroy them.

Swarms of locusts were seen in buildings such as Beverly Park, Garden Estate, and Heritage City as well as buildings in Sikanderpur in the high rise town bordering Delhi.

Earlier, this month, the locust attack has damaged crops in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, and other states. It is said that a young locust causes more damage to the crops than a mature and older one. The mature locusts concentrate on breeding and they could fly a shorter distance whereas the younger locusts could cover a distance of 150 km in a day.

Experts believe that the current locust invasion was a part of the residue population that survived after February 17, 2020, in the deserts of Pakistan and Iran. After 1993, for the first time on May 22, 2019, large swarms of locusts invaded areas bordering Pakistan. Locust controlling units thought that they could finish them by the end of October 2019 but the invasion continued till early February 2020.

Dr. Rajesh Kumar, Plant Protection Officer, Jaisalmer said that, "On February 17, 2020, we kept all our efforts to kill the locusts and forced them to go across the border in Pakistan and Iran. We put an end to our locust control measures and expected that Pakistan and Iran would also take some type of measures to eliminate them. But the residue population continued breeding and in April they attacked.”

The central government has set up 11 control rooms to look after the situation. Last month, Haryana Chief Secretary Keshni Anand Arora had directed the Agriculture department and district administrations to take all precautionary measures in advance so as to handle the possible attack of locusts in the state. Here are some of the videos taken by the residents of Gurugram.