Talk:Araku Valley
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Why the area is mapped
- The Hans India (24 February 2019) reports ganja on "over 10,000 acres in 200 villages in Visakha agency areas", and says most villages of the Munchingput, Pedabayalu, Chinthapalli, G. Madugula and G.K. Veedhi mandals were producing it. Its headline calls the same tract the "Araku agency".
- Onmanorama (27 July 2016) reports the Andhra Pradesh Excise Department's count of 149 ganja-growing villages in the Paderu, Puttu, Madugula, Peda Bayalu, Chintapalli, G.K. Veedhi, Hukumpeta, Ananthagiri and Koyyuru areas of Visakhapatnam district. "Puttu" is read as Munchingput and "Madugula" as G. Madugula, the agency mandals of those names.
- ETV Bharat (7 July 2025) names seven mandals in its eradication campaign: Chinthapalli, G. Madugula, Koyyuru, Paderu, G.K. Veedhi, Munchingput and Pedabayalu.
- The Coco Genes seed lot COC-IND-AND-0120200001 names the Araku Valley itself.
- The area takes its title from the valley and the press's "Araku agency"; the cultivation the sources describe lies mostly in mandals other than Araku Valley itself (Chinthapalli, G.K. Veedhi, Pedabayalu, Munchingput, G. Madugula, Paderu, Koyyuru). The two names used by the press are given in the infobox's other names.
Growing status
The status is Active. Cultivation is reported from 2016 to 2021, and in 2025 the Visakhapatnam Range police destroyed 0.10 acres. ETV Bharat (2025) reports that police brought cultivation in the Alluri hills to "near zero" after the surveys of July and August 2023, and that none was seen in the following season; it does not say that growing has ended, and the police figure for 2025 shows some crop still being found. The "near zero" passage is ETV Bharat's own narration, crediting the Eagle task force and the police; it says the change came "in just one year" but dates the decisive surveys to July and August 2023. If a later source says growing has stopped, the status changes with it.
How the border is drawn
- The border is Alluri Sitharama Raju District as constituted on 31 December 2025: the union of its 11 mandals in OpenStreetMap (relations 10134253 Hukumpeta, 10134254 Ananthagiri, 10134255 Araku Valley, 10134256 Dumbriguda, 10134257 Munchingi Puttu, 10134294 Peda Bayalu, 10134303 G. Madugula, 10134304 Paderu, 10136534 Koyyuru, 10136536 G.K. Veedhi and 10136537 Chintapalle), about 6,600 km². The district's official history page lists the same 11 mandals.
- It is a proxy, wider than the valley that gives the area its name. The valley proper lies in four northern mandals of the district (Araku Valley, Ananthagiri, Dumbriguda and Hukumpeta), and the Coco Genes lot comes from there. The border takes in the whole district because every mandal the sources name for cultivation lies in it and none lies outside it; a border on the four valley mandals alone would leave out most of the mandals the press names, and the press calls the whole tract the Araku agency.
- The 12 mandals that went to Polavaram District on 31 December 2025 are left out: no source read places cultivation in them.
- The infobox's map point is at Araku (18.33, 82.88), the point of the Coco Genes lot; the border is not drawn from it.
Sources
- Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894. Narainaswamy's evidence (Madras witness 69, pp. 261–262) was read on the page images. In his oral evidence he says his duties took him "over the Vizagapatam district and the Agency Tracts"; the article reports what he says of the Agency tracts and does not place his villages more exactly. He also names the Gulgunda Agency, which he thought about a quarter of the whole.
- Press. Every article cited was read in full. The News Minute (7 December 2021) is a ground report from Chintapalli mandal.
Where the sources disagree
- Yields. The Excise Department figures reported in 2016 (up to 5,000 plants an acre, 250–300 g a plant) which Onmanorama gives as 1,000 kg an acre; ETV Bharat (2025) gives over 2,000 kg an acre and two crops a year. The article gives the department's figures only.
- Acreage. The Hans India gives over 10,000 acres in 2019; ETV Bharat gives 11,000 acres for the "Manyam region" of the Visakhapatnam and Alluri districts at an earlier peak it does not date; Onmanorama (2016) gives plantations of "5,000 acres to 50,000 acres" for Andhra Pradesh. The article gives the first two with their dates.
Names
Onmanorama (2016) gives the variety names Seelavathi, Rajahamsa and Kalapathri. In 1893 N. H. Daniel, the apothecary at Koraput, answered one of the Commission's questions with "Gnanapatri, Bhasavapatri, Serlavathi, etc." (Madras witness 103, p. 299). That question (no. 4) asks for the names of the hemp plant, so these are plant names. "Serlavathi" is close to Onmanorama's "Seelavathi", but no source read links the two, and the article does not use Daniel's list.
Sources not used
- The News Minute (2021) reports a local journalist's view that the police had once tolerated cultivation as part of anti-Maoist strategy, a former Director General of Police's reply that there was no evidence of it, and a former Maoist leader's denial of Maoist involvement. The article does not take up the dispute.
- Onmanorama (2016) says ganja plantations in Andhra Pradesh range from 5,000 to 50,000 acres; the range is too wide to report as a figure.