A furor has broken out between Centre and Tamil Nadu government over the heavy downpour in the state.
Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin earlier had said the IMD failed to issue timely warnings about the extreme rainfall and added that the agency issued a red alert two days after the downpour began.
A furor has broken out between Centre and Tamil Nadu government over the heavy downpour in the state.
The row erupted after Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman countered chief minister MK Stalin’s claim of a delay by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) in issuing a weather warning.
Tamil Nadu’s state finance minister Thangam Thennarasu also accused the Centre of refusing relief funds for rain-affected districts.
The four southern districts of Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli, Tenkasi and Kanyakumari were engulfed by ceaseless rain on December 17 and 18, which was the region’s wettest spell since 1871, according to Stalin.?
Thoothukudi recorded 95 cm rainfall in a span of 24 hours, which is more than the annual rainfall of 70cm for the district, as per IMD.
At a press conference in on Friday, Sitharaman said 31 people were killed in rain-related incidents in the four districts on those two days. As the Union minister attacked the state government over its preparedness to tackle the floods, she also dismissed Stalin’s claim earlier this week that the IMD had failed to issue timely warnings about the extreme rainfall in the four districts.
The Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC) in Chennai had forecast heavy rains in the southern state well in advance, Sitharaman said. “It (RMC) is the state-of-the-art meteorological centre located in Chennai. Forecasts (by this centre) are normally done in a dynamic way, that is every five days in advance. Every day there is a forecast but it warns you five days in advance about adverse weather conditions. What precautionary measures did the state government take after these alerts?” she said.
For the extreme rainfall that occurred on December 17, the Union minister said, an alert was issued by the RMC on December 12 itself. “Either the officials (concerned) did not brief the chief minister properly or they have received the forecast but did not act on it. But there is data that is recorded that the information on heavy rainfall was given on December 12 itself,” she said.
On Tuesday, Stalin said the IMD failed to issue timely warnings about the extreme rainfall and added that the agency issued a red alert two days after the downpour began. “It rained several times higher than what was forecast by the meteorological centre. It was unprecedented,” he told reporters in Delhi.
Sitharaman said: “As a Union minister, I do not wish to speak about certain things but despite that, I will ask, before the NDRF reached there (in the four districts), was anyone from the Tamil Nadu government there? No.”
She also hit out at Stalin for attending the Opposition INDIA bloc’s meeting in Delhi on Tuesday instead of visiting the affected districts and taking stock of the situation.
She also alleged that the state government had failed to learn lessons from the devastating floods in 2015. “What are the lessons learnt from the 2015 deluge in Chennai and what kind of measures did the government take? Even now Ambattur industrial area is reeling under floods,” she said.
She said the Centre released Rs 900 crore in two installments to Tamil Nadu in the current financial year, to deal with the havoc caused by the unprecedented rainfall and flooding.
The ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), however, accused the Centre of refusing funds to the rain-affected state.
The state government had urged the Centre to declare the rain-affected districts as a “calamity of severe nature” and disburse Rs 21,000 crore as relief to Tamil Nadu, “but the Centre declined”, Thennarasu said in a statement.
“By rejecting both the demands, the finance minister has spoken in an arrogant language and insulted the people of the state by thinking that she was insulting the DMK government and the chief minister,” he added.
To this, Sitharaman, in a post on X, said: “There is no practice of announcing any disaster, in any state, at any time, by any government (of India) as National Disaster. Since there is a lot of interest in TN, even Tsunami of December 2004 (UPA with partner DMK) was not declared as Natl. Disaster.”
In his statement, Thennarasu said Chennai, Kanchipuram, Tiruvallur, and Chengalpattu districts received heavy rains on December 4 and Tirunelveli, Thoothukudi, Kanyakumari and Tenkasi districts received very heavy rain on December 17 and 18, resulting in massive floods. “A tragedy was averted only because of the precautionary measures taken by the Tamil Nadu government,” he said.