The Indian Army has so far rescued over 1.10 lakh civilians from flood-affected areas of Jammu & Kashmir but Chief Minister Omar Abdullah is still struggling to track down his Cabinet colleagues and senior police and Government officials to bring his crippled State machinery on track.
On Thursday, the Army handed over satellite phones and other equipments to help the State Government set up their control rooms in Srinagar to scale up rescue operations.
In the absence of any communication networks, the State Government had failed to set up separate control rooms to assist the rescue operations.
As public anger started growing over complete breakdown of the State Government machinery, Omar took charge of relief operations and boarded an IAF chopper to distribute food material to hungry and thirsty people stranded over their rooftops for over five days.
Several senior Ministers including Finance Minister AR Rather, Rural and Urban Development Minister Ali Mohd Sagar, Health Minister Taj Mohi Ud Din, Forest Minister Mian Altaf, CAPD Minister Ch Mohd Ramzan, Speaker of the State Assembly Mubarak Gul, DGP Police K Rajendra, senior bureaucrats are yet to join rescue operations.
However, some Jammu-based Congress Ministers are camping here and made efforts to reach out to the affected people along with team of officials to assess the scale of damage. All the district development commissioners have been directed by to assess the damage.
“We have not seen senior Cabinet Ministers helping the Chief Minister to handle the biggest catastrophe the State has witnessed in the recent history,” angry residents told mediapersons after they were rescued by the Army teams.
Speaking to a private TV channel on Thursday, Omar Abdullah made a candid admission. “My Government couldn’t respond in the first 24 hours as we didn’t have a Government.”
On allegations that there was no sign of the Government in response to the massive humanitarian crisis, the Chief Minister replied, “For the first 24 to 36 hours that was my question (Where’s the GovernmentIJ). Can you remember a single natural disaster that took out the capital cityIJ I had no Government. I started rebuilding efforts with six people in a room.”