The BJP on Monday demanded Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to address the nation and help mobilise funds for relief works in flood-hit Uttarakhand. It also suggested the Government to set up a commission for extracting the lessons learnt from such tragedies and on how to deal with them in future.
The Opposition party also announced that its MlAs and MPs will donate their one month’s salary each for the disaster relief fund and also help mobilise more resources and funds for relief work.
“Unfortunately, the Prime Minister has still not spoken to the country. He must speak to the nation. Every Prime Minister or President of the country speaks to its citizens when such a calamity happens. But now seven days on, he has not spoken. Because that will help, and millions of hands will come up for help,” BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar said.
He said BJP wants the Government should declare the Uttarakhand flood a national calamity. Training his guns on Congress for its criticism of Narendra Modi, Javadekar accused the Congress resorting to politics.
“Even in the discourse on such a tragedy, they have developed a Modi-phobia. So, even if Modi does good things, they see ‘bad’ in it. Because they are scared, because of his popularity...because of the response he is getting and because of the way they are losing,” Javadekar said.
He said while the nation stood united in its response to deal with the situation arising in the aftermath of the calamity, the Chief Ministers were doing their bit at their own places and some by going there.