A day after the Wayanad landslide claimed the lives of several people, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday refuted Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s claim that the state government was warned earlier on July 23 regarding a possible natural calamity in the district due to heavy rains.
The chief minister of Kerala said that the India Meteorological Department had only issued an orange alert in the district ahead of the landslides. The district, however, received over 500 millimeters of rainfall, which was extremely higher than what was predicted by the IMD.
While addressing a press conference on Wednesday, Vijayan said, “A red alert was issued for the district only after the landslides hit there on Tuesday morning,” .
The CM further said that this was not the time for “blame game” and that he was not taking Shah’s remarks in an adversarial manner.
A red alert indicates heavy to extremely heavy rain of over 20 cm in 24 hours, while an orange alert means very heavy rain (6 cm to 20 cm).
Earlier in the day, Shah while speaking at the Rajya Sabha, said that the Kerala government did not heed to the early warning and also did not get alerted even by the arrival of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) battalions in the state.
Shah added that an early warning was sent to the state seven days ahead of the July 30 landslide. Another warning was given on July 24 also.
Had the Kerala government got itself alerted and acted as soon as NDRF teams landed there, losses could have been minimised, the Home Minister claimed.
(with PTI inputs)
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