Centre clears Rs 5,908 cr aid to 7 disaster-hit states

New Delhi, Jan 6 (SocialNews.XYZ) The Centre on Monday decided to provide additional assistance of Rs 5,908.56 crore to seven disaster-hit states - Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tripura and Uttar Pradesh, officials said.

The states were affected by floods, landslides and cloudburst during south west monsoon 2019.

A High Level Committee (HLC), chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, approved the additional assistance to seven states from National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF)-- Rs 616.63 crore to Assam, Rs 284.93 crore to Himachal Pradesh, Rs 1869.85 crore to Karnataka, Rs 1749.73 crore to Madhya Pradesh, Rs 956.93 crore to Maharashtra, Rs 63.32 to Tripura and Rs 367.17 crore to Uttar Pradesh.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was present in the meeting along with senior officers of the Ministries of Home Affairs, Finance, Agriculture and NITI Aayog.

Earlier, the Central government had released an interim financial assistance of Rs 3,200 crore to four states -- Rs 1,200 crore to Karnataka, Rs 1,000 crore to Madhya Pradesh, Rs 600 crore to Maharashtra and Rs 400 crore to Bihar. In addition, during 2019-20, till date, the Centre had released Rs 8,068.33 crore to 27 states as Central share from the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF).

"The Central government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been providing full support to the state governments by providing timely logistics and financial resources to supplement the efforts of the state governments to deal with the situation effectively in the wake of natural calamities," a Home Ministry statement said.

Source: IANS