Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit the landslide-hit Wayanad district in Kerala on Saturday (August 10, 2024).
Officials said Mr. Modi would drop by a relief camp, a hospital, and the Bailey bridge, which the Army constructed in the disaster zone for relief and rescue operations. Mr. Modi would also conduct an aerial survey of the disaster zone. He would arrive at the Kannur airport by a special flight and fly on an IAF helicopter to Wayanad.
Mr. Modi would interact with survivors and also the injured. He would then leave for New Delhi the same day at 4 p.m.
The Kerala Cabinet subcommittee overseeing the Wayanad disaster response and the district administration would welcome Mr. Modi.
On Thursday (August 8), an advance Special Protection Group (SPG) team visited Wayanad and scouted for a safe landing zone for Mr. Modi’s helicopter. The Kerala Police coordinated closely with the SPG to streamline the Prime Minister’s visit.
Crucial for Kerala
Mr. Modi’s visit is crucial for rehabilitating the landslide-devastated people. The ruling front and the Opposition had requested the Central government to declare the July 30 earthfall that flattened Chooralmala, Mundakkai, and Attamala localities a national disaster.
Such a declaration would potentially open the door for the inflow of significant Central funds to Kerala. Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan had demanded that the scale of the disaster warranted at least an “L3 categorisation.”
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had said the scale of the disaster had no parallel in recent times in the country. He hoped the Centre would declare the Wayanad landslide a natural disaster.
State BJP leaders remain non-committal
However, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders from Kerala have been non-committal. Union Minister of State for Tourism and BJP’s MP from Thrissur Lok Sabha constituency Suresh Gopi had said the Centre was weighing the legality of Kerala’s demand. He said the Centre had to consider various parameters before committing to such a declaration. Mr Gopi also said the Centre had sought a report from the State.
Union Minister of State for Fisheries George Kurian said he toured the disaster zone and interacted with the district administration and the Cabinet subcommittee before submitting a report to Mr. Modi.
Fraught political climate
Mr. Modi’s visit also comes in an arguably fraught political climate.
For one, the Union Minister of Forests, Environment and Climate Change Bhupendra Yadav’s accusation that the Kerala government had laid the ground for the July 30 disaster by abetting illegal habitation and illegal mining in the forested locality had emerged as a touchy sore point between the Centre and the State ahead of Mr. Modi’s visit.
Earlier, the Centre had blamed the disaster on the Kerala government by stating that the provincial administration failed to heed weather warnings about heavy and potentially landslide-inducing rains in Wayanad in the days preceding July 30.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah told Lok Sabha that the Kerala government should have taken a cue from the arrival of nine National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams a week before the disaster struck Wayanad on July 30.
Pinarayi Vijayan counters
Mr. Shah’s and Mr. Yadav’s damning statements elicited a strong response from Mr. Vijayan. He said the Centre’s weather warnings fell wide off the mark. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) had forecast normal rains for Wayanad in the days preceding the disaster.
Mr. Vijayan said the Central Water Commission (CWC) and the Geological Survey of India (GSI) saw no reason to raise a red flag about flooding or a landslide, respectively.
Given the strengthening monsoon, Mr. Vijayan said the State government had requisitioned the NDRF’s services.
He pointedly urged the Centre to modernise weather prediction models and methods so that provincial government could take pre-emptive action to mitigate loss of life and property.
CM critiques Yadav
Notably, Mr. Vijayan hit back at Mr. Yadav, accusing the Union Minister of denigrating the disaster-struck people, including the dead and the missing, as “illegal occupiers”.
He pointed out that the nearest granite quarry was nearly 10.5 km from the disaster zone. Moreover, the flattened villages did not fall within any disaster-prone zone. The origin of the massive earthfall was 6.5 km away from the devastated villages.
Unusually high rainfall had caused the distant hillock to tumble downhill and wash away the villages into the nearby Iruvanipuzha river.
‘Sons of the soil’
Mr. Vijayan called the landslide victims “sons of the soil” who braved heavy odds to carve out a life for themselves in a hostile and far-flung environment.
He said Mr. Yadav was “clueless” about the more than 100-year-old tradition, culture and sacrifices of settler farmers and plantation workers in Kerala. Mr. Vijayan said Mr. Yadav had denigrated a people reeling from the shock of the catastrophic landslide.
The INDIA bloc also moved a breach of privilege motion in Rajya Sabha against Mr. Shah and Mr. Yadav.
