Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Credit: PTI Photos
New Delhi/ Thiruvananthapuram: A blame game has erupted over the Wayanad disaster with Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday blaming the Kerala government for "not heeding" to the prior warning sent to it as early as July 23. Terming the charge as "baseless", Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the rain warning issued by the IMD was off the mark and the red alert came after the landslides.
Even as he said in Parliament that the Union government stood firm with Kerala in dealing with the calamity, Shah accused the state administration of not getting alerted of the impending disaster even after the arrival of nine National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) battalions. If the state government had acted on time, he claimed, several lives could have been saved.
Shah also made similar remarks in Lok Sabha.
His remarks in Rajya Sabha came as a couple of MPs like Raghav Chadha, Jebi Mather and AA Rahim demanded that early warning systems should have been there to warn the states on such disasters. Mather and Rahim alleged there was no early warning system that could have come out in help for Kerala.
Shah said early warning alerts were sent to Kerala on July 23, 24, 25 and 26 about possible landslides. He said several other states had heeded to early warning and there had been zero casualty there.
"A cyclone warning before seven days was given to Odisha and there was only one death. A cyclone warning three days prior to the event in Gujarat ensured that not even a single animal was killed...What did the Kerala government do to help the vulnerable? Why were they not evacuated? If they were shifted, why are there so many deaths," he said.
Vijayan described Shah’s charges as "baseless" while insisting that what the Home Minister meant was Indian Meteorological Department's (IMD) weather reports, which the state gave due importance and took precautions accordingly.
He said the IMD had only issued an orange alert for the landslide-hit area till Tuesday morning where there was 572 mm rainfall in 48 hours while the warning was for 115 mm to 204 mm rainfall in two days.
"Even on July 29 afternoon, only an orange alert was sounded by IMD. Only after the landslide did the IMD issue a red alert," he said, adding the Geological Survey of India, which had installed a landslide warning system in Wayanad, also sounded only green alert for July 30 and 31.
It means that the central government agency only forecasted chances for minor landslides, Vijayan said, adding the Central Water Commission also did not sound a flood alert.
Participating in the debate in Rajya Sabha, MPs like John Brittas and Rahim (CPM), Mather (Congress), Saket Gokhale (Trinamool Congress) and Mujibullah Khan (BJD) among others demanded that the Wayanad disaster be declared a national calamity.
In the last seven years, Brittas said, around 60% or 2,239 out of 3,582 landslides that occurred in the country were in Kerala.
Mather said the Rs 2 lakh compensation announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was "very less" and demanded that it should be raised to Rs 25 lakh.
BJP's Surender Singh Nagar sought to drag Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, the former MP from Wayanad, into the debate by saying that if he was serious enough about Wayanad earlier, he would have raised the issues earlier. Rahul had resigned as Wayanad MP as he decided to retain Rae Bareli seat. Another BJP MP Lahar Singh Siroya also targeted Rahul.