With thousands still stranded in deluge-ravaged Kolhapur and Sangli districts, a selfie video of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and State Water Resource Minister Girish Mahajan in a seemingly frivolous mood after a survey of flood-hit areas has drawn sharp condemnations from Opposition leaders and citizens alike.
In the video, taken by a member of Mr. Mahajan’s entourage, the Minister is seen waving his hand and smiling during his stock-taking of Kolhapur’s dire flood situation.
‘Flood tourism’
As the clip went viral, it evoked the ire of local leaders such as Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) State president Jayant Patil as well as Raju Shetti, former MP and the chief of the Swabhimani Paksha, who slammed Mr. Mahajan’s “flood tourism”.
“It is shameful that in a critical situation like this with the crisis not yet in hand, the Ministers of the BJP government should indulge in such levity. Instead of focusing on how to rescue people from backwater villages and reaching out to them, they are taking token tours of this region,” said Mr. Shetti, speaking from Kolhapur’s Shirol taluk, stating that the boat in which the government’s Ministers were touring would be better served to rescue desperate people still marooned in several taluks and tehsils in the district.
Mr. Shetti, a former two-time MP of Hatkanangale in Kolhapur, further hit out at the sheer insensitivity of the government led by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, remarking that the situation was becoming critical by the hour and that the government and the district administrations had no clue how to cope with it.
He said that it was only due to the initiative and resilience of the locals that the crisis was prevented from turning into a full-blown tragedy.
“The Chief Minister had no qualms about not visiting Sangli, but satisfied himself with aerial surveys…It is sad that the people had no elected representatives with them, as in the case of the Sangli boat tragedy yesterday. It was the villagers who found the bodies of the dead lying in the mud. Till midnight, no last rites could be performed owing to administrative and governmental apathy,” Mr. Shetti said.
‘Unfortunate example’
Remarking that Mr. Mahajan’s video was an “unfortunate example” of government apathy, Mr. Patil, who hails from Islampur in Sangli, said that such gestures proved that the government was not seriously focusing on relief efforts.
“Even now, after six days of the deluge, the guardian Ministers of Kolhapur and Sangli have not visited the people personally…the flood-afflicted public are completely tired of this lamentable indifference shown towards them by their elected representatives,” said Mr. Patil, remarking that he had been urging the administration for the past 48 hours to undertake the rescue of more than 8,000 people still marooned in the Sangalwadi area of Sangli.
“I am continuously receiving calls from people in my area who are stranded without food, essential supplies and clean drinking water for more than 72 hours now. But no steps are being taken by the government or the administration to bring relief to them. Instead, Ministers are roaming about in high spirits, in shameful contrast to the tears of the flood-afflicted citizens,” Mr. Patil said.
Remarking that Mr. Mahajan’s levity was in poor taste at such a critical time, Senior Congressman and former Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan said that Mr. Fadnavis ought to have dispatched a more knowledgeable and capable Cabinet Minister instead.
1.11 lakh people evacuated
Meanwhile, rescue operations were on at full throttle in both districts with rains marginally loosening their grip over Kolhapur and Sangli.
More than 1.11 lakh persons from nearly 290 villages had so far been evacuated to safe zones in Kolhapur, said District Collector Daulat Desai, while authorities in Sangli said that more than 90,000 persons had been pulled out and moved to relief shelters.
Despite the level of the Panchanga River in Kolhapur reducing by a couple of feet, the level of the Krishna River in Sangli continued to be high as flood waters showed no signs of receding in the cities and rural areas of both districts.
While the attenuation of the water current enabled more National Disaster Response Force teams to reach and begin evacuating people from acutely-hit areas such as Chikhali and Khidrapur in Kolhapur and Haripur in Sangli, the public ire against Mr. Fadnavis and his government was palpable among the flood-afflicted.
“Since three days, we have been trying to call district administration officers, but no one was picking up our calls. It is only today that the administration has begun sending a few boats,” said Jayant Jadhav of Sangli, who is part of a relief outfit that has rescued more than a 1,000 people.
Ravindra Kamble of Chikhali in Kolhapur, a villager in his seventies, said that he was rescued only after enduring a three-day nightmare of being marooned in his village.
“Why has the Chief Minister or guardian Minister of Sangli not bothered to visit us and offer succour? The Chief Minister and other Ministers merely conduct aerial surveys and have no conception of the plight of common people, who are cut off from all basic necessities and are stranded for four days without food and water,” said Kaustubh Pol, a resident of Sangli.