Leader of Opposition in Himachal Pradesh, Jairam Thakur, on Monday slammed the state Congress government for being insensitive towards the natural calamity in Mandi district.The former Chief Minister said the executive engineer, who was doing work to rehabilitate disaster-hit people, was transferred under the pressure of some leaders, and no senior officer was replaced in his position.
“Wherever there is a disaster or a tragedy in an area, and this area is left in the hands of the ‘patwaris’. The Chief Minister visited the disaster-affected areas after nine days but left after announcing only Rs 1 crore for rehabilitation works against the actual loss of Rs 500 crore,” the BJP leader told the media here.
“The question now is: Why has the Chief Minister, who talks big, not announced a special package? In the relief package, the Chief Minister announced Rs 7 lakh for a damaged house, out of which the state will contribute Rs 4 lakh and the remaining amount will be contributed by the Centre.
But surprisingly, no notification in this regard has been issued till now. The Chief Minister should explain the reason for this,” he said. The Leader of Opposition raised questions over the decision to shift the Panchayati Raj Institute to Mandi town.
“Recently, I got a call from the Panchayati Raj Minister, and he said the Panchayati Raj Training Institute should be shifted from Thunag to Mandi. This institute has not been damaged in the calamity, so why is there a need to relocate it? Similar is the case of the Horticulture College for which our government had allocated Rs 10 crore and granted forest clearance,” he pointed out.
Thakur questioned the government if many areas of Shimla are damaged due to heavy rains, will you change the capital of the state? He reminded Chief Minister Sukhvinder Sukhu not to take political mileage at the time of tragedy. “The Chief Minister has said that Jairam Thakur should sit in Mandi for 10 days. I would like to tell him that I have been in Mandi for 20 days.
We have spent a large part of our lives building the Seraj Assembly constituency and understand the pain of the devastation there,” an emotional Thakur said.Commenting on Revenue Minister Jagat Singh Negi's statements, Thakur said all assertions given by the Revenue Minister “are irresponsible”.
Meanwhile, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday ordered the formation of a multi-sectoral central team to look into the reasons behind the alarming frequency with which natural disasters have been occurring in Himachal Pradesh in the past few years.
The central team will include experts from the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Central Building Research Institute (CBRI) in Roorkee, Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) Pune and Indian Institute of Technology Indore (IIT) Indore. An inter-ministerial central team has also been deputed to the state to assess the damage caused by incidents of flash flood, cloudburst and landslide.