With the rains stopping and the water level receding in Kerala, the state is slowly coming back on its track and started the mammoth process of recovery and rehabilitation.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said, “Even if the water has receded, the houses may not be liveable. The rehabilitation work has already begun.”
CM Vijayan added, “The affected houses need inspection. There is a danger of snakes lurking around. Machinery may not work. There has to be a lot of caution in going back home. It is not advisable for families to go back by themselves.”
He further added that nearly 26 lakh people have lost electricity. The connection would be reestablished soon, with no extra charge.
The state has incurred a loss of Rs 19,512 crore so far and agriculture in 40,000 hectares has been destroyed and 20,000 houses have been destroyed so far.
Updates:
Rebuilding needs a lot of funds. The total amount that has come to the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund so far is Rs 210 crore. An additional Rs 160 crore has been promised.
The rebuilding has already begun in 11 municipal corporations. Rs 25000 would be given to the panchayat wards for cleanliness works, and Rs 50,000 to municipal wards.
Some teams, including CII and Labour Contract Society, have come forward to help with the rehabilitation work.
Industry officials revealed that banks are likely to come out with loan restructuring packages.
Rail and road traffic has been partially restored across Kerala, the train services in Kayankulam-Kottayam- Ernakulam, and Palakkad-Shoranur-Kozhikkode sections have been resumed.
Damages in Aluva- Thrissur, Thrissur-Shoranur, Kayamkulam-Kottayam- Ernakulam Shoranur-Tirur, Shoranur- Palakkad routes have been fixed.
Few special trains were started via Trivandrum, Tirunelveli, and Madurai to Chennai, Egmore, Howarah, Gorakhpur, Bhubaneswar routes to evacuate stranded people.
Railway had begun running 159 Express trains and 11 passenger trains connecting Kerala to the rest of the states from August 16-18.
The Punjab Cabinet has approved amendments to CrPC and IPC to make sacrilege of all religious texts punishable with life imprisonment, thus taking a major step towards curbing such incidents and maintaining communal harmony in the state.
After Punjab Chief Minister, Capt Amarinder Singh and Shiv Sena bumping into Punjab Minister, Navjot Singh Sidhu for attending the oath-taking ceremony of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and his act of huglomacy, its turn of Khan to wade into the row.
To set the tone for the 2019 general election, Congress president Rahul Gandhi today made some changes in the party set up. The changes come a month after Rahul Gandhi restructured the party set up and dropped veterans such as Digvijaya Singh, Sushikumar Shinde, Janardhan Dwivedi and CP Joshi from the all-powerful CWC and appointed some new faces in their place.
In a major incident, Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) arrested former Shiv Sena party member Shrikant Pangarkar (ex corporator of the Jalna Municipal Corporation,) in an alleged involvement in ‘harbouring and funding’ men accused of conspiring terror attacks in Maharashtra.
Reliance Group Chairman Anil Ambani on August 20 while clarifying the role of his company in Rafale fighter jet deal has written to Congress President Rahul Gandhi saying that the party has been “misinformed, misdirected and misled” by malicious vested interests and corporate rivals on the offsets related to the Rafale deal.
Bihar police arrested 15 people for allegedly beating, thrashing and stripping the women at Bihiya in Arrah, on suspicion of involvement in the murder of a youth whose dead body was found near the railway track at Bihiya railway station.
The Punjab Cabinet led by Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Tuesday paved the way for the enactment of the law to enable MLAs to hold several new categories of `Office of Profit.’
Eleven people were killed in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kishtwar district on Tuesday, after a vehicle carrying devotees to the Machail yatra pilgrimage, fell into the Chenab.
