Flood situation in Telangana should be declared as national calamity: Congress to PM Modi

The Congress has urged prime minister Narendra Modi to declare as "national calamity" the present situation caused by heavy rains and floods in Telangana state including Greater Hyderabad.

The core committee of Congress also wanted the State government to allocate Rs 5,000 crore for relief and rehabilitation measures instead of Rs 550 crore announced earlier.

The TPCC Core Committee found fault with the relief and rehabilitation measures undertaken by the State government. They wanted the State to scale-up the relief and rehabilitation activities in the State especially Hyderabad. They demanded that an ex-gratia of Rs 25 lakh each should be given to the families of the deceased and Rs 5 lakh each should be disbursed to the houses which were completely damaged, while Rs 2 lakh each for the houses with partial damages. They also sought Rs 50,000 each as compensation to houses which



were inundated.

The TPCC Core Committee demanded that the State government provide Rs 20,000 per acre to farmers who suffered severe crop losses due to heavy rains, as an immediate relief. They wanted the government to complete crop loss enumeration and purchase damaged or higher moisture contained paddy, cotton and maize crops. On behalf of the Congress party, they decided deploy a team of Congress cadre led by former MP Madhu Yashki Goud to oversee the relief and rehabilitation activities taken up by the Congress leadership.

Congress Legislative Party leader Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, TPCC working president and MP A Revanth Reddy, MLC T Jeevan Reddy, MLA D Sridhar Babu, former Ministers Ponnala Lakshmaiah and P Sudarshan Reddy along with AICC secretaries G Chinna Reddy, SA Sampath Kumar, Ch Vamshichand Reddy and former MP Mallu Ravi, attended the TPCC Core Committee meeting at Pragnapur.