Home Minister Amit Shah has on Tuesday directed a high power committee to be sent to Telangana to visit the flood-affected regions to make an assessment of the loss and submit a report to the Centre at the earliest.
This was stated by Telangana BJP president and Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar here after he met Mr. Shah along with national general secretary and TS in charge Tarun Chugh at New Delhi to apprise him of the flood situation and the related damage to infrastructure, crops damage and loss of lives in the last few days. Mr. Sanjay Kumar thanked the Home Minister for promptly responding to the plea to help the State.
In a separate development, former Minister Eatala Rajender fired another salvo on Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao by accusing him of ignoring the other inundated areas of Mancherial, Manthani and others and demanded suitable compensation be given to the affected people in places other than Bhadrachalam.
Talking to media at Bhupalapally, he held the government squarely responsible for the present devastation due to faulty planning of the irrigation projects which did not take into account the backwater flooding as in Medigadda and Annaram irrigation works. The Kaleswaram project has become “unviable” and further raising the pumping capacity will only lead to “more corruption and waste of public money,” he observed, reeling out figures of cost and maintenance to buttress his opinion.
In another press meet, official spokesman N.V. Subash charged TRS leadership of “indulging in flood politics” in criticising the BJP when “it was supposed to be taking care of the relief and rehabilitation of affected people”. “The TRS government is known for making empty promises during the elections and during floods but conveniently forgetting about implementing them in the last eight years leaving people high and dry,” he claimed.
KCR is “personally responsible” for the submergence of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project as he had “disregarded” the opinion of the irrigation experts and alleged of a scam in the repairs to be taken up spending hundreds of crores. He also questioned the “non-functioning” of the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) headed by Home Minister Mehmood Ali during the current situation.
