Two-day visit by Central-Ministerial Team will not project situation of whole State: Congress

Hyderabad (Telangana) [India], October 24 (ANI): All India Congress Committee (AICC) national spokesperson Prof. Sravan Dasoju on Friday said that Central-Ministerial Team's two-day visit is too short to arrive at any concrete assessment regarding the extent of damage caused by floods in Telangana.

Speaking to ANI Dasoju said, "Despite the fact that the Central-Ministerial Team visit is too short to arrive at any concrete conclusions about the extent of damage, we are hopeful that with this visit, the Central Team may get a basic understanding of the situation but the true picture will emerge only with the wide range of interactions with various affected people and various other stakeholders but not just by interacting with the state government functionaries and ruling party representatives."

"The recent floods in Hyderabad are a manmade disaster and particularly due to callousness and lopsided priorities of the ruling government in Hyderabad and Telangana. Even after such havoc, the state government has not made any deep-rooted efforts to assess the damage," he said.

He requested Central Team to visit more areas in the state to assess the actual damage due to the floods.

"The Chief Minister of Telangana did not even step out of his residence and failed to conduct even an aerial survey to understand the gravity of the situation and casually made estimates of damage on paper without any scientific effort. Further, while making an attempt to assess the damage, we also urge the Central Team to dig deep and visit more areas to assess the damage due to floods so that at least, based on the observations and suggestions, the government of Telangana wakes up and proactively prepares itself to face such a challenge and be able to mitigate the extent of damage in future, if any," Dasoju told ANI.

He said that Opposition party has learnt that huge damage has been caused to people and they are in deep distress.

"As the main Opposition party in Telangana, we have gathered substantial information about the damage caused to people and their sufferings across Telangana and Hyderabad in particular. We submit that People are in deep distress due to unexpected loss of lives and assets. People have suffered without food and water for days. Houses are collapsed and their household electronic equipment and furniture etc are fully damaged. There are lakhs of pathetic stories to be heard in Hyderabad," Dasoju said.

He reiterated that the Central government must declare this as National Calamity and extend all possible support to affected families and restore normalcy across Telangana.

"Lakhs of farmers have faced massive crop losses. We already have made an open appeal to Prime Minister of India to declare it as National Calamity. We once again reiterate our demand with the Central Team that Government of India must declare this as National Calamity and extend all possible support to affected families and restore normalcy in Hyderabad and also across Telangana," he told.

Dasoju said that the Central Team will able see a true picture of the devastation if only the delegation meets a cross-section of people including the Opposition parties.

"We did try to reach out to the office of the Chief Secretary, Government of Telangana, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) commissioner Lokesh Kumar and Rahul Bojja Ji, who we suppose are handling the Central Team visit schedule, requesting for your appointment. We made calls to them and sent messages also. However, unfortunately, there is no positive response from them. We believe that the Central Team will able to arrive at a true picture of the devastation if only the delegation meets a cross-section of people including the opposition parties, who represent the voice of voiceless or else we are afraid that truth may not surface. A two-day visit by the Central-Ministerial Team will not project situation of the whole state, more assessment to arrive at a true picture of devastation needed," he said.

Earlier in the day, Government of India's inter-ministerial team followed by AIMIM MLA from Karwan, Kausar Mohiuddin visited flood-affected areas in the city -- Nadeem colony, Balreddy Nagar, Virasath Nagar -- to assess flood damages in Karwan constituency. (ANI)