Sonia Gandhi seeks liberal Central package for flood-affected areas

Congress president Sonia Gandhi today made an aerial survey of the worst flood-affected areas of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh after which she spoke to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and sought a liberal package for them to tackle the situation.

Accompanied by defence minister AK Antony and Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh, Gandhi flew over Hardwar along Ganga and saw large areas of the Bijnaur, Muzzafarnagar, Rampur, Moradabad and Barielly districts inundated by flood waters of Ganga, Ramganga and Kosi rivers .

According to a statement issued by Singh, she saw a number of villages totally cut off, some of the kutcha houses totally damaged. She also saw that water had entered some parts of Rampur and Moradabad towns and canal and roads have breached at some places.

Besides, she observed that there was an extensive damage to the standing Kharif crop, Singh said. 

Immediately after reaching Delhi, Gandhi spoke to the prime minister on phone and requested him to have the damage caused by floods and cloud bursts in Uttarakhand and UP assessed immediately and ensure that a liberal package was made available to them through the National Calamity Relief Fund.

Gandhi was briefed at the Dehradun airport by the defence officials about the rescue operations conducted by the army in the incident of landslide in Almora District and other areas of Uttarakhand.

Sixty people have died and thousands rendered homeless due to the floods in Uttarakhand. 

Nine people died today in rain-related incidents in Uttar Pradesh where flood situation aggravated due to rise in the level of major rivers in several districts, affecting road and railway traffic.