Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday visited the flash flood-hit areas of the Jammu division, officials said. He is likely to visit the worst-affected Manguchak village in the Jammu district.
Home Minister Shah is accompanied by UT Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and Lt Governor Manoj Sinha as he takes stock of the situation at the Tawi Bridge near Bikram Chowk and inspects the damage along the riverbanks.
Shah had arrived in Jammu on Sunday night to assess the flood situation and the relief efforts currently underway at several landslide, flash flood, and cloudburst-hit regions. He is likely to undertake an aerial survey of the flood-hit areas later in the day.
He would also co-chair a meeting at the Raj Bhawan later to review the damages caused by the flash floods to the border security grid, officials said.
A total of more than 130 people have lost their lives, with 34 still missing, in the cloudbursts, landslides, and flash floods in Kishtwar, Kathua, Reasi, and Ramban districts since August 14.
Meanwhile, heavy rainfall between August 26 and 27 caused flooding in several low-lying areas in the Jammu division, causing massive infrastructure damage.
The landslide caused by the heavy downpour killed 36 pilgrims in Adhkuwari en route to the Mata Vaishno Devi shrine on August 26. This is Shah’s second visit to Jammu in less than three months.
Before this, he had also visited on May 29 to assess the damage caused by the border shelling by Pakistani forces during the four-day escalation.
Meanwhile, besides Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had also visited the cloudburst-hit Chositi village of the Kishtwar district, where 65 people lost their lives.
Singh’s plan to visit the devastated village, on the way to the Machail Mata shrine, was scuppered by inclement weather and the blocking of a road by a fresh landslide in the Paddar Sub-division.
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