Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation, Shri Amit Shah chairs a meeting with Ministers of Disaster Management of the States/Union Territories, at VigyanBhawan in New Delhi, today
Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation Shri Amit Shah chaired a meeting with Ministers of Disaster Management of the States/Union Territories, at VigyanBhawan in New Delhi, today. Under the vision @ 2047 of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, the main objective of the meeting was to further strengthen the disaster risk reduction system in the country to make India disaster resilient and to discuss various issues related to disaster management with the Administration of States and Union Territories.
In his address, Shri Amit Shah announced three major schemes of over Rs. 8,000 crore regarding the disaster management in the country:
1) Rs. 5,000 crore project to expand and modernize fire services across the states
2) Rs. 2,500-crore project to reduce the risk of urban flooding in the seven most populous metros — Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune
3) Rs. 825 Crore National Landslide Risk Mitigation Project for Landslide Mitigation in 17 States and Union Territories
He said that it should be our endeavour that not a single person’s life lost due to disaster, and under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi, all the states have made efforts towards achieving this goal in the last 5 years.
Union Home Minister said that the discussions during the meeting are essential for formulating and revising policies at the national level. He said that the Centre and the States have achieved many milestones in the last nine years, but we cannot be complacent. He said that the nature of the disasters has changed and their frequency and intensity have also increased, and for this reason we have to sharpen and broaden our preparedness to deal with them. He said that many new disasters are being encountered at various places, and we have to be prepared for them.
Shri Amit Shah said that post 2004, after extensive discussion on disaster management at the national level, a collective responsibility and response mechanism was developed at the centre and state level. He said that during the Covid-19 pandemic period, the Centre and the States, under the leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, successfully tackled the worst pandemic of the century. At that difficult time, the Central government, the States and the public set an excellent example to the world of fighting together on every front. Shri Shah said that under the leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, the government has provided more than 220 crore free Corona vaccines, arranged food for crores of poor people, brought back lakhs of labourers to their hometowns and made arrangements to address their concerns through DBT.
Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation said that till a few years back, our approach towards disaster was reactionary and relief-centric. He said that during the last 9 years, under the leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, with collective hard work and dedication we have implemented on ground a new approach of early warning system, prevention, mitigation and preparedness-based disaster management. He said that the Modi government has set a target of preparing around one lakh youth volunteers in 350 high-risk disaster prone districts, and we are getting very good results during disasters. Shri Shah said that under the leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, the Centre has made proactive efforts to help the states during the last four years by sending IMCT teams 73 times within a time frame of just 10 days. He said that comparing the 9 years from 2005-06 to 2013-14 with 2014-15 to 2022-23, the fund of Rs. 35,858 crore released to SDRF has now almost tripled to Rs. 1,04,704 crore. In addition, the release of funds from NDRF has increased by nearly three times from Rs. 25,000 crores to Rs. 77,000 crores. He said that due to proactive approach, Centre and States have increased budgetary provision in the areas of disaster risk reduction and post-disaster relief and rehabilitation. He said that in the year 2021, the National Disaster Mitigation Fund was constituted under the Central Government with Rs 16,700 crore and under SDMF Rs 32,000 crore has been kept for mitigation activities.
