Hyderabad, October 10: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday announced Rs 1,000 crore as advance to the State Government for relief operations in the flood-hit districts. He also declared the devastation a national calamity.
Answering a query at a media conference here, the Prime Minister said that what happened in AP was a tragedy and the Centre would stand by the State for any help. It would depute a team to assess the damage and the funds would be released in consultation with the State Government, whose efforts he lauded. To another question, Singh said there was no question of disparity in relief to calamity-stricken States. “As long as I am Prime Minister, no State will be discriminated against. We will treat all States — Congress-led or not — equally,” he stressed.
Asked if there had been a failure in alerting the State to the disaster, he said this was not the occasion to talk about such things. Lessons should be drawn from the experience and steps taken to mitigate the effects of such occurrences in future.
The Prime Minister said the State Government had given him a presentation on the devastation caused by the floods and he was pained to see the havoc wrought by the floods. Money was not a constraint, he said, and asked the State Government to go ahead with the relief and rehabilitation work.
Asked for his reactions on US President Barack Obama
getting the Nobel Prize, Manmohan Singh said it was news to him and hastened to add: “If what you said is indeed the case, my heartiest congratulations to His Excellency Barack Obama.” On the attacks on the Indian Embassy in Kabul and the Maoist strike on a police station in Gadchirowli, Singh said the country was facing both internal and external terrorism. “We will deal with such things firmly,” he said. On the economy, he said stimulus packages such as the one he had mooted at the recent G20 meet were needed for some more time. He was confident that the country would maintain its 6 per cent growth rate.
Chief Minister K Rosaiah thanked the Prime Minister for visiting the State. In a memorandum to Manmohan Singh, he sought Rs 6,000 crore as advance under the National Calamity Contingency Fund and Rs 3,052 crore under Central Road Fund, Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Fund and NREGA.
–Agencies–