Gadkari flays government on scanty aid to flood-hit

BHIWANDI: The Vilasrao Deshmukh government which hurriedly sanctioned schemes worth thousands of crores of rupees to win the support of a few MLAs during the recent no-confidence motion was rubbing salt on the wound of Thane’s flood victims by paying them a mere Rs 1 crore, leader of opposition in the legislative council Nitin Gadkari said here on Thursday.
Speaking to reporters during his visit to the rain-hit areas, Mr Gadkari said the Deshmukh government had sanctioned developmental schemes worth Rs 10,000 crore in the constituencies of 143 MLAs who supported it during the recent political crisis.
Without naming independent MLA Hitendra Thakur, the senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader said the government had okayed a Rs 279-crore water supply project in his area in order to secure his vote during the confidence motion.
The same government is giving just Rs 600, a relief aid fixed 21 years ago, to those whose houses have been washed away by the floods. The government is not just being indifferent, it is insulting the victims. The opposition will move an adjournment motion in the legislature when the monsoon session opens on July 29 and ask for a discussion on the flood situation in the state, he said.
The state has asked the Centre for an assistance of Rs 75 crore. “We demand that the state should also contribute an equal amount and pay Rs 2 lakhs to the next kin of the dead instead of the Rs 50,000 that it has now declared,’’ he said.
According to official figures, 56 people died when the heavy rains lashed the area on June 26. The government claims it has disbursed over Rs 66 lakhs to the flood victims in the district. In Bhiwandi, the government claims it paid Rs 3.5 lakhs to seven of the 13 who died. Three victims remain unidentified and three others were from other parts of the state.
Mr Gadkari, who met with an accident some time ago walked on his aluminium crutches, met several rain-hit families. However,wherever he went, he was greeted by disgruntled people who said the relief had not reached them. Dharmanna Nadgiri, 60, a retired watchman of the municipal drainage pumping station,who lost his elder son, Raju, to the floods said no help had reached him.
Despite his protest, Dharmanna, Raju’s widow and her four children fell at Mr Gadkari’s feet and cried asking for some monetary aid. “Give me a letter asking for a job for your second son. I will try for that,’’ Mr Gadkari told Dharmanna whose house at the pumping station at Brahman Alley was completely under water on June 26, when the area witnessed three times the average rainfall and the highest in the last several decades.
Ramala Rajput, 45, a member of the nomadic tribes who hawked plasticware on Bhiwandi’s streets too had the same grouse. “Our goods worth Rs 3,000 were washed away. The leaders came but no help has poured in,’’ she said.
Several kilometres ahead, in Ambhai village near Wada, Namdeo Gaikar, another tribal, kept talking to himself. All his rice crops in one acre and eight gunthas of land had been washed away. “Where do I go? What will my children and wife eat? I have nothing to offer them,’’ he wept, his hands clasping a copy of a government paper which certified him as the owner of the said land. Janardhan Patil of Ambhai said the village had lost over 300 acres of rice crops. Gaikar’s land is now filled with stones and sand brought in by the floods. There cannot be any fresh cultivation here unless this stones and sand are removed. “The government is merely paying the farmers according to the price of what they had sowed. But what about the crop which they have lost?’’ asked Chitaman Wanaga, MP from Dahanu, another worst-affected area.
Meanwhile, a central team of officials will visit the area on Friday, it is learnt. The chief minister had asked the Centre to send its own team to assess the damage. Workers repair a road at Ashagad near Charoti Naka after the soil was washed away in the recent rains.