Alleging step-motherly attitude by the UPA government in distribution of flood relief to states, BJP MP Ananth Kumar on Tuesday urged the Prime Minister to visit Karnataka to get a first hand knowledge of the destruction caused in the state.

Opening the debate in Lok Sabha on the flood damage across the country, he said although Karnataka has suffered damages to the tune of Rs 4200 crore and sought Rs 500 crore as immediate assistance, no amount has been released so far. This was despite Centre’s claim that it has released Rs 1392 crore to the states out of the Rs 4358 crore corpus under the Calamity Relief Fund.

Charging the Centre of playing politics with flood funds, he said although Home Minister Shivraj Patil accompanied Congress President Sonia Gandhi in her visits to Assam and Bihar, the Prime Minister has so far not visited any flood-affected state.

When he referred to his earlier demand of revision of CRF guidelines, Patil said the revision has taken place and there has been a 35 per cent in increase in compensation.

Patil said CRF guidelines were reviewed every five years after the Finance Commission gave its recommendations. This year, accordingly, the guidelines were reviewed based on the panel’s suggestions.
Noting that this year’s rain havoc was unprecedented, Kumar said even United Nations has stated that this was the worst-ever flood in India in living memory.

He criticised the Centre for not constituting the National disaster management fund and pointed out that the Task Force on floods constituted in 2004 had recommended setting up of respond fund and mitigation fund. These have not been done.

The BJP member questioned the forecast of the Met department which, according to him predicted 94 per cent of normal rains while the country so far received nearly 200 per cent of normal.

Noting that global experts have mentioned that countries like India should learn to live with floods, he said there was dire need for an institutional mechanism in this regard.