Flood: Rs 908-crore relief for government

BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha Government on Wednesday said it had received a communication from the Centre towards sanction of Rs 908.3 crore from the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF) for flood relief and mitigation measures. The State Government faced a huge  embarrassment after the Opposition accused it of suppressing the information during the recently concluded Assembly session. An official spokesman of the Government said, the Home Ministry letter, dated December 27, was communicated to them earlier in the day. Besides Rs 908.3 crore, the letter said, another Rs 10 crore had been sanctioned from special component of the National Rural Drinking Water Projects towards repair of damaged tube wells. Another Rs 3 crore has been allocated to meet the expenses incurred for air-dropping of the food and relief materials. The State Government had submitted two memoranda seeking a combined assistance of Rs 3,265.8 crore towards food assistance after 21 districts were devastated by two successive floods during September. However, the sanction means that the State will get just about Rs 678.65 crore from the NDRF since 75 per cent of the calamity relief fund (CRF) sanctioned earlier (` 306 crore) will be adjusted from the allocation. Effectively, the net availability of funds to the State will be 691.65 crore. This is the first substantial allocation from the Centre towards flood assistance since 2003. In 2001, the State had received Rs 100 crore whereas two years later, it got an allocation of Rs 104.43 crore.  In 2006, the Centre sanctioned Rs 25 crore from NDRF while two years later, it announced Rs 500 crore whereas the actual availability stood at Rs 98 crore after the adjustments made towards CRF. Last year, the Government had submitted two memoranda after drought and unseasonal rains hit the farmers hard. The Centre had sanctioned Rs 815 crore which after adjustment stood at Rs 560.17 crore. The Central assistance, for quite sometime, has been an issue of contention for both the ruling Biju Janatal Dal and the Opposition Congress. While the Naveen Patnaik-led Government has been crying foul over the inadequate help from the Centre - it has even accused the UPA Government of discrimination against Odisha as the assistance to Bihar and Andhra Pradesh has been substantial - the Congress, in the last session of the Assembly, cornered it for not making public the flood assistance deliberately.