Six States Get Rs 104cr Aid For Flood Relief

West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan will get Rs 21 crore each while Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh will get Rs 10 crore each for this purpose.

This was decided by the National Calamity Relief Committee (NCRC) in its meeting convened by agriculture minister Chaturanan Mishra and attended by finance minister P Chidambaram and planning commission deputy chairman Madhu Dandavate. Orissa Chief Minister JB Patnaik also attended the meeting. The NCRC also considered the cases of other states for additional assistance from the National Fund for Calamity Relief. It recommended an assistance of Rs 5 crore for Orissa and Rs 21 crore for Assam to enable these states cope with the task of rehabilitating the people and property affected by the floods.

The committee observed that the third and fourth instalments of the central share of the relief fund for 1996-97 had been released in advance to Haryana (over Rs 9 crore), Jammu and Kashmir (over Rs 7 crore) and Kerala (about Rs 20.5 crore) to help them tackle the situation created by the floods. The third instalment of Rajasthan, amounting Rs 33.5 crore, has also been released in advance.

The national relief fund has been created with a corpus of Rs 700 crore for 1995 to 2000 to deal with calamities of rare severity. The corpus is shared by the Centre and states in the ratio of 75:25. The fund is managed by the NCRC which is a sub-committee of the National Development Council.