AP Floods: Ram Mohan Confident of Centre’s Support to State

 Vijayawada: Civil Aviation Minister K Ram Mohan Naidu on Tuesday sounded confident of central government support to Andhra Pradesh to deal with the havoc caused by the rain and floods and for its declaration as a natural calamity.

The Union minister arrived here Tuesday to take stock of the floods situation, especially in Vijayawada where several colonies were flooded. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah and other central leaders were in touch with chief minister Chandrababu Naidu, for updates.

A promise from the Centre is that once the flood situation improved, enumeration would be done to assess the floods’ impact on crops and properties. Accordingly, the Centre would extend relief to the state.

The minister said this was for the first time that drones were being used to supply food to the flood-hit people.

He said that Amaravati was not affected by the heavy rain and floods, and dismissed the fears that the region might be submerged.

Simhachalam temple sends 30,000 food packets to Vijayawada

The Simhachalam Devasthanam dispatched 30,000 packets of lemon rice or pulihora-temple prasadam for the flood-hit people of Vijayawada, following a call from the endowment commissioner and Visakhapatnam collector.

“We sent 10,000 packets on Monday evening, 10,000 more on Tuesday morning and another 10,000 on Tuesday afternoon. We will be sending another 10,000 packets tonight,” executive director of the temple, Srinivasa Rao said.

He personally supervised the cooking and tasted the rice before packing. “We will continue sending food packets until further orders,’’ officials said.