Centre should treat Assam floods as natural calamity: AGP
Huge amount has been kept unspent
Guwahati, Sep 11 : Though Assam has been allocated Rs. 210.62 crore under the Calamity Relief Fund for the year 2008-09, the Finance Ministry has not released the first instalment of the central share (Rs. 78.78 crore), due to be released in June, owing to non-submission of an utilisation report by the State government.
This was disclosed in a letter written by Minister of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs V. Radhika Selvi to Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) MP from the Lakhimpur Lok Sabha constituency Arun Kumar Sharma.
The letter was in response to the MP’s letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on June 14.
Ms. Selvi said the State government had been requested to expedite the submission of an utilisation report to the Finance Ministry to enable them to release the said amount. The government had not submitted any memorandum seeking additional assistance from the National Calamity Contingency Fund in the wake of floods during 2008, she pointed out.
Dr. Sharma, who distributed copies of Ms. Selvi’s letter to journalists here on Wednesday, alleged that the letter exposed the Congress-led State government’s indifference to the woes of the flood affected people.
Sufficient funds
The Union Minister also said the State government had sufficient balance from the available funds to meet the cost of flood relief operations.
The funds, according to Accountant General, amounted to Rs. 643.57 crore at the end of 2007-08.
Mr. Sharma and three other AGP MPs – Birendra Prasad Baishya, Kumar Dipak Das and Sarbananda Sonowal – alleged that while the ravaging annual floods had rendered thousands homeless, destroyed cropped land and lakhs of people were crying for relief and rehabilitation, the Tarun Gogoi-led government failed to submit a utilisation certificate and thereby deprived the flood affected people from due central assistance.
They also wanted to know why such a huge amount was kept unspent when thousands of people, displaced due to erosion and staying on embankments for years together, were yet to rehabilitated and not given adequate relief.
The AGP MPs also accused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of discriminating the flood affected State people by not announcing any special assistance while promptly announcing special package for the flood affected in Bihar.
They said the Prime Minister should resign as a member of the Rajya Sabha from Assam as he had “failed to respond to the woes of lakhs of flood affected people of the State he represented in Parliament.”
Reacting to an from Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari to MPs to contribute Rs. 10 lakh each from the MP’s Local Area Development Scheme funds for reconstruction projects in flood-hit areas of Bihar, the AGP MPs urged Mr. Chatterjee and Mr. Ansari to issue similar appeal for Assam.
Statewide demonstration
The Assam State Kisan Sabha on Wednesday called for a State-wide farmers’ demonstration on September 16 to highlight a 10-point charter of demands such as declaring Assam’s flood and erosion problem as a national problem, distributing relief materials to the flood-hit families till the harvest of the next crop, desilting the cropped land, giving a compensation of Rs. 1 lakh to those rendered homeless and providing free seeds of Rabi crops by November and jobs to the flood-hit people under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
Huge amount has been kept unspent
Guwahati, Sep 11 : Though Assam has been allocated Rs. 210.62 crore under the Calamity Relief Fund for the year 2008-09, the Finance Ministry has not released the first instalment of the central share (Rs. 78.78 crore), due to be released in June, owing to non-submission of an utilisation report by the State government.
This was disclosed in a letter written by Minister of State in the Ministry of Home Affairs V. Radhika Selvi to Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) MP from the Lakhimpur Lok Sabha constituency Arun Kumar Sharma.
The letter was in response to the MP’s letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on June 14.
Ms. Selvi said the State government had been requested to expedite the submission of an utilisation report to the Finance Ministry to enable them to release the said amount. The government had not submitted any memorandum seeking additional assistance from the National Calamity Contingency Fund in the wake of floods during 2008, she pointed out.
Dr. Sharma, who distributed copies of Ms. Selvi’s letter to journalists here on Wednesday, alleged that the letter exposed the Congress-led State government’s indifference to the woes of the flood affected people.
Sufficient funds
The Union Minister also said the State government had sufficient balance from the available funds to meet the cost of flood relief operations.
The funds, according to Accountant General, amounted to Rs. 643.57 crore at the end of 2007-08.
Mr. Sharma and three other AGP MPs – Birendra Prasad Baishya, Kumar Dipak Das and Sarbananda Sonowal – alleged that while the ravaging annual floods had rendered thousands homeless, destroyed cropped land and lakhs of people were crying for relief and rehabilitation, the Tarun Gogoi-led government failed to submit a utilisation certificate and thereby deprived the flood affected people from due central assistance.
They also wanted to know why such a huge amount was kept unspent when thousands of people, displaced due to erosion and staying on embankments for years together, were yet to rehabilitated and not given adequate relief.
The AGP MPs also accused Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of discriminating the flood affected State people by not announcing any special assistance while promptly announcing special package for the flood affected in Bihar.
They said the Prime Minister should resign as a member of the Rajya Sabha from Assam as he had “failed to respond to the woes of lakhs of flood affected people of the State he represented in Parliament.”
Reacting to an from Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari to MPs to contribute Rs. 10 lakh each from the MP’s Local Area Development Scheme funds for reconstruction projects in flood-hit areas of Bihar, the AGP MPs urged Mr. Chatterjee and Mr. Ansari to issue similar appeal for Assam.
Statewide demonstration
The Assam State Kisan Sabha on Wednesday called for a State-wide farmers’ demonstration on September 16 to highlight a 10-point charter of demands such as declaring Assam’s flood and erosion problem as a national problem, distributing relief materials to the flood-hit families till the harvest of the next crop, desilting the cropped land, giving a compensation of Rs. 1 lakh to those rendered homeless and providing free seeds of Rabi crops by November and jobs to the flood-hit people under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
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