 "rains")
Pleas to the central government to provide financial assistance to rain-battered Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka were made in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.
Raising the issue through a zero-hour mention, G K Vasan of the Tamil Maanila Congress-Moopanar said Tamil Nadu is reeling under heavy rains for the past month.
"Lakes, dams, reservoirs, and other water bodies have been overflowing. The streets of Chennai city and neighbouring districts have been flooded," he said.
"Farmers today are suffering because of continuous rains."
The Tamil Nadu government, he said, needs assistance. "I request the central government team to come again and inspect and restore normalcy by giving financial aid to Tamil Nadu."
K C Ramamurthy of the BJP said incessant heavy rains in Karnataka from October have made life topsy-turvy, inundated and destroyed houses and damaged infrastructure facilities in the IT hub.
"The untimely incessant rainfall all over the state has caused extensive damage to standing crops, most of which were in the harvesting stage. The persistent rainfall has also damaged a large number of houses and critical infrastructures such as roads," he said, adding 25 people have been killed due to rain-related incidents.
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More than 9,000 houses have been damaged, crops on 7 lakh hectares of land were lost and more than 2,300 km of road network has been damaged in the state.
He sought an immediate assessment of the damage to release relief from the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF). He also requested the government to "release Rs 2,000 crore as immediate financial assistance to take up relief, rehabilitation and restoration work."
V Vijayasai Reddy of the YSRCP said unprecedented rains and floods caused breaches to reservoirs, inundating villages and towns in Andhra Pradesh.
"Roads, bridges, railway tracks were extensively damaged.... so far, 44 people have died, 16 are reported missing and about 70,000 persons have been displaced from their homes," he said, adding an estimated 1.85 lakh hectares of agriculture and horticulture crops have been damaged.
He put the loss caused to crops and infrastructure at Rs 6,054 crore.
"I urge the government of India and the Finance Minister to provide interim relief package of Rs 1,000 crore to Andhra Pradesh," he said.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
