Congress demands Centre to declare Hyderabad floods as ‘national calamity’

Hyderabad: The Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) demanded that the Centre declare the flooding of Hyderabad as a national calamity. On Wednesday they also urged the Telangana State government to increase Rs 550 crore to that of Rs 5,000 crore for relief and rehabilitation measures.

The TPCC Committee who found fault with the relief and rehabilitation measures by the government said urged that the relief amount must be scaled, especially Hyderabad.

They demanded that an ex-gratia of Rs 25 lakh each should be given to the families of the deceased and Rs 5 lakh each should be disbursed to the houses which were completely damaged, while Rs 2 lakh each for the houses with partial damages. They also sought Rs 50,000 each as compensation to houses which were inundated.

They also demanded that the State government provide Rs 20,000 per acre to farmers who suffered severe crop losses due to heavy rains, as an immediate relief. They wanted the government to complete crop loss enumeration and purchase damaged or higher moisture contained paddy, cotton and maize crops. On behalf of the Congress party, they decided deploy a team of Congress cadre led by former MP Madhu Yashki Goud to oversee the relief and rehabilitation activities taken up by the Congress leadership

The meeting was attended by Congress Legislative Party leader Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, TPCC working president and MP A Revanth Reddy, MLC T Jeevan Reddy, MLA D Sridhar Babu, former Ministers Ponnala Lakshmaiah and P Sudarshan Reddy along with AICC secretaries G Chinna Reddy, SA Sampath Kumar, Ch Vamshichand Reddy and former MP Mallu Ravi at Pragnapur.