Congress, BJP start blame game over ongoing flood relief operations

Following the war of words on social networking sites, leaders of Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have started to blame each other for the sluggish relief operations in flood hit Uttarakhand.

While the rescue operations in the flood-ravaged state are still underway, following the unprecedented catastrophe due to flash floods and landslides, political leaders trafficked the social networking sites with flaying comments.

Initiated by a tweet from Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari, hitting out at senior BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley for not expressing sympathy or visiting disaster hit Uttarakhand.

On the ongoing observations, Congress leader Bhakta Charan Das said that the BJP leaders should have come and seen the plight of the people in the disaster hit region.

"I do not understand, why both of them (Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley) could not stand by the or could not visit to the spot, the affected area of Uttarakhand, to see the devastation, the high scale magnitude devastation, the plight of the suffering people, the children, the mother, the father, the parents, the old people and the kind of operation, relief operation going on over there. And they should have given suggestions over there after their visit," said Das.

Responding on the remark earlier made by Tewari, Swaraj had said that her party leaders feel for the people in flood affected areas and it was the reason that they had kept away from visiting those areas as it would have hampered the rescue operations.

Supporting the statement, BJP spokesperson Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that the Congress leaders are contradicting their statement as earlier the BJP leaders who had visited or surveyed the hill state were criticised by them.

"When BJP leader Rajnath Singh and Narendra Modi had visited the flood affected area, the Congress, under their political strategies were criticising their visit. After that their VIP Rahul Gandhi went there and was busy getting photographs clicked, and now they are making list and commenting on who all from the opposition should have visited the flood hit area and who should not. Earlier they were emphasizing that no one should visit the deluged region," said Naqvi.

Fifteen days after floods hit Uttarakhand killing hundreds of people and sweeping away numerous houses, the evacuation of all the stranded pilgrims and tourists is likely to be over by this evening.

Over 900 pilgrims were airlifted from Badrinath and 650 pilgrims reached Joshimath on foot yesterday. Rescuers from Army are engaged to locate the stranded pilgrims as well as locals on higher reaches in Pithoragarh.

Small helicopters from the Air force and private sector have been pressed into service to drop food packets to the villages totally cut off. About 200 such villages have been identified.

Over one lakh seven thousand and 600 stranded people have been evacuated from the affected areas so far.