Nirmala Sitharaman visits flood-hit Kodagu district

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today visited flood-hit ares here in Kodagu district of Karnataka and reviewed the situation with officials.

She also visited a flood relief camp here and interacted with children, youth and their families sheltered there in the wake of recent torrential rains that lashed the district, bordering Kerala, claiming at least 17 lives and leaving a trail of destruction.

Sitharaman assured to take up with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other central ministers concerned about the restoration work of roads, telecommunication network and other infrastructure, badly affected by the heavy rains that triggered landslides and floods in the district.

A Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka, she is the second Union minister to visit the flood-ravaged district, after D V Sadananada Gowda, who hails from the state.

More than 5,000 people have been rendered homeless in Kodagu district where rescue and relief operations are underway in full swing.

District in-charge Minister Sa Ra Mahesh and local MP Pratap Simha, officials of the district administration, government departments and Defence personnel attended the review meeting.

Officials informed that the district received excess rainfall of 150 per cent than the normal quantum.

Talking to reporters, Sitharaman said the Centre's relief and rehabilitation package would be announced after assessment by a team of officials and the state's government estimate of losses.

She declined to make any guess on how much relief package was expected from the centre.

"It would not be wise on my part to second guess what central can give and what centre cannot give...But once the team comes and makes an assessment into which all your (state) inputs will also be taken, and with your inputs, the central assessment team can come up with a figure," she added.

The Minister later announced a Rs 1 crore aid from her MPs constituency development funds and Rs 7 crore from Corporate Social Responsibility funds of Defence PSUs for flood and landslide relief work, her office said in a tweet.

During her interaction with the displaced people in the relief camp, a child Navanish from village Hebbettigeri presented a pictorial representation of the flood fury.

In a painting, he depicted how the flood destroyed their house, trees in the surrounding and how he saw some people swept away in the flood on a fateful night.