Announces additional funds for States
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday made an aerial visit to the flood-affected areas of Assam and Meghalaya and sanctioned additional funds to the flood-hit States so that relief and rehabilitation measures could be taken up immediately.
While the Home Minister has sanctioned an additional amount of Rs. 286 crore for Assam, he sanctioned an additional fund of Rs 8 crore for flood-hit Garo Hills region of Meghalaya. Singh has also sanctioned an additional amount of Rs 20 crore for Arunachal Pradesh, which had also witnessed severe floods.
The Minister informed that the Centre had already released Central funds of Rs 386 crore for Assam, followed by Rs 123 crore for Meghalaya and Rs 70 crore for Arunachal Pradesh.
It may be mentioned here that 40 persons have died due to recent floods in four districts of Assam last month followed by 55 persons in Meghalaya’s Garo Hills last month. A total of 56 persons have died in Arunachal Pradesh due to floods this year.
Singh said that this is only initial sanction and that the Centre would release all the required funds to deal with the crisis once the State Government submits memorandums to the Centre detailing all the devastations.
“The Centre would give all the support to the State Governments to deal with the disaster. However, we have asked the State Governments to submit memorandums so that we can send the inter-ministerial teams to assess the total damage simultaneously funds could be released,” Singh said.