Rahul Gandhi to visit flood-hit Belagavi

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will arrive in the flood-hit Belagavi district on Tuesday, in what will be his first visit to Karnataka after the Lok Sabha polls.

Gandhi is currently visiting areas ravaged by floods and landslides in Kerala’s Wayanad, which he represents in the Lok Sabha.

According to sources in the Congress, Gandhi’s visit to Belagavi will be brief. He is expected to leave Kozhikode and reach the Belagavi airport at around 11.40 am on Tuesday. He will head to a relief camp accompanied with Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president Dinesh Gundu Rao at about 12.20 pm. He will board a flight back to Delhi at 1.30 pm.

Belagavi is the worst-hit district in Karnataka, what with 12 people killed in the floods. A total of 3.45 lakh people in the district have been evacuated to safety, accounting for three-fifths of all evacuations in the state. The district has suffered crop losses across 1.57 lakh hectares.

Gandhi, the former Congress president, visited the Malappuram district on Sunday. He distributed supplies at a relief camp in Kaithapoyil in Wayanad on Monday. Meanwhile, Gandhi wrote an appeal on Facebook seeking donations in the form of relief materials for Wayanad.