Cutting across party lines, members in Lok Sabha today urged the government to provide more funds to the states besides developing a permanent mechanism to deal with the recurring problem of drought and floods.
Participating in the resumed discussion in the Lok Sabha on issues concerning natural calamities, Bijoya Chakravarty (BJP) demanded that the Centre should provide direct help to the people impacted by the floods in Assam as the state government was not doing anything.
She also demanded more funds to deal with the problems concerning soil erosion.
Bhartruhari Mahtab (BJD) also suggested that the Centre should allocate more funds to Odhisa to help the state government deal with the problem created by cyclone 'Hudhud'.
Mahtab regretted that there was a huge difference between the funds demanded by the state government and the funds provided by the Centre.
Raising the problem of increasing incidence of farmer suicides in Maharashtra, Vinayak Raut (Shiv Sena) suggested that Centre should increase quantum of assistance to fight the impact of natural calamities.
He demanded some permanent mechanism to deal with the problem of recurring drought and floods in different parts of the country.
Hukmdev Narayan Yadav (BJP) suggested that the government should dismantle all embankments to ensure free flow of rivers.
He attributed increasing incidence of natural calamities to widespread environmental degradation.
Others who participated in the discussion that remained inconclusive included Rama Devi, Hukum Singh and Jagdambika Pal (all BJP).
