While the death toll rising in the devastating landslides in Karala’s Wayanad district, Union Home Minister Amit Shah chosen to blame the Kerala government for ignoring `early warnings’ by the Center, which was soon refuted by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan terming it as `baseless’.
Amit Shah stated in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday that the Centre had provided an early warning to the state government led by chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Shah claimed that the Union government had alerted Kerala about the potential for landslides seven days in advance.
Slamming the state’s Left Democratic Front (LDF) government, Shah said, “My condolences to the bereaved families. I want to clarify something to the country. They kept on talking about early warning. I want to clarify that on 23 July, the government of India gave an early warning to the government of Kerala, which was seven days before the incident, and then on 24 and 25 July too, early warning was given.”
Strongly refuting Amit Shah’s claims Vijayan said the India Meteorological Department (IMD) had only issued an orange alert in the district ahead of the landslides. However, the district received over 572 millimetres of rainfall, which was extremely higher than what was predicted by the IMD.
“In the disaster areas, an orange alert was in place, with the IMD warning that rainfall would be between 115 mm and 204 mm. However, the actual rainfall was much higher. The area received 200 mm of rainfall in the first 24 hours and 372 mm in the next 24 hours, totalling 572 mm in 48 hours.
“This far exceeded the initial warning. The area had never been on red alert before the disaster. However, after the incident, a red alert was issued at six o’clock in the morning (of July 30) after the landslides occurred,” Vijayan added.
Stating that a red alert was issued for the district only after the landslides hit on Tuesday morning, Vijayan advised the union Home Minister this was not the time for “blame games” and that he was not taking Shah’s remarks in an adversarial manner.