It is all about politics over natural calamity in Himachal Pradesh. More so this time because the disaster-hit area is the home district and Assembly constituency of former BJP Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition, Jai Ram Thakur.
The BJP, which had allegedly backed out of supporting the Congress government's demand for a disaster relief package in 2023, when unprecedented rains caused massive damage in Himachal, is now caught on the wrong foot. This time, it is actively moving the Centre to help Himachal Pradesh.
The Leader of Opposition has even called for ‘area-specific relief’ during his meetings with the Central BJP leadership, in view of the major damage in his constituency, Seraj in Mandi district, where more than 40 people were washed away in flashfloods (some bodies are yet not recovered). Houses, fertile land, and entire villages vanished in the furious waters within no time on the intervening night of June 30 and July 1.
All the BJP MPs and other leaders have also met National BJP President and Union Health and Family Welfare Minister, Jagat Prakash Nadda, for an assessment of the damage and to seek possible relief and rehabilitation aid for the homeless.
Personally, Jai Ram Thakur toiled hard for days in July to reach out to the people who had lost family members and lifelong belongings in the flashfloods. “When I look back at the times when I entered electoral politics in Seraj, there were very few road links and development. When I became MLA in 1998 and won all the elections since then, I tried hard to bring basic development in Seraj and the area got roads, educational institutions and other infrastructure. It’s all back to square one. It will again take a long time now to re-build Seraj,” said Jai Ram Thakur, former CM and six-time MLA from Seraj. He is worried about the rehabilitation of affected people, especially with winters a few months away.
The state government, which is already under pressure since the beginning of its tenure, especially with the Central government allegedly not providing adequate relief in 2023 (despite damages pegged at Rs 10,000 crore), is in trouble again. Many people are now homeless in Mandi district and other parts of the state. According to the government, the estimated damage this monsoon is around Rs 1,700 crore, but the bigger problem in Seraj is that the land itself has been washed away.
Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu has urged the Centre to relax forest laws to allow the state government to rehabilitate those rendered homeless. He has also urged the Centre for a special relief package for Himachal Pradesh, which has repeatedly suffered massive damage during monsoon over the past few years. Sukhu has appealed to BJP MPs and party leaders from the state to strongly plead Himachal’s case before the Centre.
““The state government is doing its best to provide immediate relief to the people. We want the Centre to liberally help the state with finances in terms of relief,” he said. He said he had urged the state BJP leaders in 2023 also to put forth the case of Himachal for relief package before the Centre, but they did not even support the resolution by us in the state Assembly, wherein we wanted the Centre to declare it a national calamity in Himachal in 2023,” the Chief Minister added.
The general public feels that in the worst-ever calamity in 2023, BJP leaders failed to represent Himachal Pradesh’s case before the Central leadership. But this time, when Jai Ram Thakur’s constituency has suffered the maximum damage, the opposition party is all geared up to bring relief money from the Centre. “They should get a good relief package to reconstruct Seraj. But the areas that suffered damage in 2023 were also part of Himachal Pradesh. Why were they given the cold shoulder,” some senior citizens remarked.
The monsoons in Himachal Pradesh have turned scary, so much that cloudbursts have become a common phenomenon during the rainy season every year. Environment activists blame it on the myopic vision of the successive governments, who visibly tinkered with nature massively to undertake development works without bothering about the environment. Environment experts, on the other hand, want the government to go for geological assessment every time a development work is taken up in the fragile hill state.
In response, the CM has engaged experts to study the causes of frequent cloudbursts in Himachal Pradesh so that long-term corrective measures can be adopted. Over the decades, hundreds of people have gone missing during monsoons, and their bodies remain untraceable despite serious efforts.
In the midst of all this, Sukhu has engaged the experts to study the reasons of frequent cloudbursts in Himachal Pradesh so that corrective measures could be taken up in the mountain state, where hundreds of people have so far gone missing in monsoons over the decades and their bodies have not been traceable despite serious efforts all through.
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