Karnataka floods: Centre sends team to visit affected areas, hold meeting with CM Bommai

Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai informed, on Saturday, that a Central team is visiting the state to assess damages caused by the July floods. He said that an official state team will accompany the group during their visits to affected areas, and expressed confidence about receiving more Central aid.  

Chief Minister Bommai was quoted by ANI as saying, “Our official team will also accompany them to see the situation and affected areas. We'll have a meeting today and then the team will go to visit flood-affected places, I'm sure the state will get more NDRF aid.”

The Centre has sent an Inter-Ministerial Central Team (IMCT) to Karnataka on a four-day visit to assess damages caused by floods in July. The team is scheduled to visit the districts of Belagavi, Bagalkot, Dharwad, Haveri and Uttara Kannada.

Bommai’s cabinet has listed an estimated loss of Rs 5,690.52 crore due to the deluge. If the analysis of the Central team falls in line with the state, it will receive an amount of approximately Rs 800 crore from the Centre. The IMCT team is scheduled to meet the chief minister on Saturday. 

Over the last two months, Karnataka has declared 83 taluks in the state as “flood hit.” Earlier in July, 61 taluks were listed as flood-affected, but heavy rainfall in August added another 22 taluks to the list. The newly added Taluks include Belagavi, Chikkamagaluru, Hubballi city, Kadur, Davanagere, Dandeli, Alur, Lakshmeshwar, Tarikere, Mundagod, Supa, Hubballi, Bhadravati, Channagiri, Annigeri, Babaleshwar, Nidagundi, Kolhar, Muddebihal, Harapanahalli, Hosanagar and Mudigere.

CM to announce new COVID-19 guidelines

Even though the cases are declining in Karnataka, the CM said that he is not convinced with the behaviour shown by the people and thinks restrictions are still required. He said, "As far as functions and events are concerned, I have seen guidelines being broken in some of the functions. That's why, considering all these, new guidelines will be released soon."

After reporting over 30,000 daily during the peak of the second wave, Karnataka has recovered well and districts like Bidar, Yadgir, Haveri and Bagalkot in North Karnataka have been registering zero or single-digit new Covid-19 cases over the past 10 days. The districts of Raichur and Vijayapura have reported zero cases in the past 24 hours, while Haveri had no new cases even on Thursday. The Bidar region has not reported a case in the past two days. 

(With inputs from ANI)