Chennai: Members of Parliament from the State have sought an appointment with the Union Home Minister Amit Shah to press for the immediate release of the Rs 37,907.19 crore demanded by Chief Minister M K Stalin for providing relief to the victims of the two natural disasters that caused widespread devastation in December.
Stalin, in a statement here on Thursday, said that nothing had been done by the Union Government despite expert teams conducting personal inspections of the damages caused by both Cyclone Michaung on December 3 and 4 in Chennai and three adjoining districts and the unprecedented rains that caused heavy floods in the districts of Thoothukudi and Tirunelveli, besides Tenkasi and Kanyakumari, and the State sending in a plethora of representations.
Though the Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to the devastation caused by the disasters in his recent speech in Trichy, no relief had come from the Union Government even after the State government had spent Rs 2,100 crore on relief operations and also launched a Rs 1000 crore livelihood rehabilitation programme to provide succor to the MSMEs, SHGs, small traders, fishermen and others, he said.
The DMK party, too, joined the chorus with its official newspaper, ‘Murasoli’ carrying a hard-hitting editorial on Thursday accusing the BJP government of adopting a step-motherly treatment to the State and warned that the people would teach them a lesson in the coming Lok Sabha elections.
Referring to the Prime Minister’s statement in Tiruchi that the BJP government had released funds to Tami Nadu 2.5 times more than what was released during the Congress rule, the editorial said that it was all an empty talk aimed at creating a wrong impression.
Modi was pretending to be sympathetic to the State that had faced two disasters in succession but had done nothing about responding to the demands of the State government or releasing the required funds, it said and compared it to the Prime Minister’s response when Gujarat was struck by floods.
It recalled the Prime Minister paying a visit to flood-hit Gujarat the same day and also announcing a huge relief package and compared it to his cold shouldering the demands for funds raised by the Tamil Nadu government for providing relief to the flood victims and not at all visiting the State after the two consecutive floods in December.
Though it had been one month since Cyclone Michaung hit Chennai, Chengalpattu, Kanchipuram and Thiruvallur districts and a fortnight since the southern districts of Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli, Tenkasi and Kanayakumari faced nature’s fury, only a total of Rs 900 crore earmarked for the State under the disaster relief fund had been released, it pointed out.
At times when damages caused by natural disasters were of a higher scale, relief had to be provided to the States from the Rs 68,000 crore National Disaster Relief Fund, which the BJP government had reneged in doing, the editorial said.
To drive home the point that Tamil Nadu was subjected to a step-motherly treatment, the editorial said that while the fund allocation for the State for Metro Rail between 2016 and 20023 was a mere Rs 3,273 crore, Maharashtra was given Rs 28,493 crore, Karnataka Rs 17,532 crore, Delhi Rs 16,89 crore, West Bengal 13,109 crore, Gujarat Rs 12,897 crore and Uttar Pradesh Rs 11,565 crore.
The question was not why those States were given such huge amounts but why Tamil Nadu was being neglected by the Union Government, the editorial said, adding that the people would teach a fitting lesson in the coming elections.
