Revanth urges PM to declare Telangana floods as national disaster, seeks Rs 2k-crore aid

Hyderabad, July 16 (Maxim News): TPCC chief A. Revanth Reddy today wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and urged him to declare the recent floods in Telangana as a national disaster.

In his letter, Revanth Reddy told the Prime Minister that Telangana was hit by torrential rainfall and flash floods in the last few days. “The fact that such extreme rainfall is unprecedented in the last 100 years, signifies the gravity of the situation in Telangana. Incessant rains have disrupted public life and wreaked havoc, cutting off connectivity to thousands of villages and causing the death of a number of people. Crops cultivated in 11 lakhs acres have been completely damaged. State and National Highways in several places have been destroyed. Connectivity and communication channels for several villages have been cut off due to severely damaged roads and cellular networks. Lack of access to food, drinking water and other essentials is causing huge public distress,” he said.

Revanth Reddy also said hundreds of ponds, lakes, streams, rivers, and reservoirs were overflowing and flooding towns and villages and added that water in several reservoirs had reached perilous levels, creating a serious threat of submergence for people living downstream while noting that hundreds of houses have been swept away in the flash floods.

“Districts of Adilabad, Komaram Bheem, Asifabad, Mancherial, Peddapalli, Nizamabad, Hanamkonda, Warangal, Jayashankhar Bhupalpally, Mulugu, Mahabubabad, Bhadradri-Kothagudem and Khammam are the worst-affected. Jainoor in Komaram Bheem district received record rainfall of 39.10 cm. These rains have dealt a severe blow to farmers who had just sowed their crops, expecting a good monsoon. The Indian Meteorological Department’s warning of heavy rainfall for the next five days is a cause for further concern,” he told the Prime Minister.

Revanth Reddy told the Prime Minister that many people had been swept away by the floods caused by the torrential rainfall. “While an electric shock caused by heavy rainfall killed a family of four in Kamareddy, two others were killed in Yadadri-Bhuvanagiri district. A person in Nirmal district died after a wall collapsed on him due to heavy rainfall. In another unfortunate instance, a journalist reporting from the field died due to drowning. Cattle and livestock in many places were swept away by the flash floods,” he noted.

Stating that there is an urgent need to declare the situation in Telangana as a National Disaster, he urged the Prime Minister a National Disaster Response Force should be deployed immediately to alleviate the situation. Noting that the State government has not conducted estimation or enumeration of crop loss due to natural calamities for the last three years, Revanth Reddy urged the Prime Minister to send a Central team to assess and estimate the crop loss to the State and added that the farmers should be given compensation of Rs 15,000 per acre and subsidies for seeds and input costs to re-cultivate crops.

Reddy said an immediate relief package of Rs 2000 crores must be provided by the Central Government to be used for repair and reconstruction of roads and to reinstate supply of essential commodities to the public in the State and added that the families of those who lost their lives in these floods should be given financial aid. He hoped that the Centre would deliver justice to Telangana and its people. (Maxim News)

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