Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday chaired a follow-up meeting to review the progress of relief and rescue operations following the devastating earthquake in Nepal yesterday.
He also directed speeding up of efforts to save and evacuate people from Nepal.
“India is with Nepal in this hour of crisis. We will do all we can to help Nepal,” he said.
At the same time, PM Modi directed that road route should also be used for evacuating stranded people at the earliest and stressed on the need for ensuring coordination among various agencies involved in relief and rescue operations.
He also tweeted about it:
Chaired a follow-up meeting to review the situation following the Earthquake in Nepal. http://t.co/kVV3kWmFJk pic.twitter.com/2cyR2TiTgh
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) April 26, 2015
The meeting was attended by Union Ministers Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Rajnath Singh and Manohar Parrikar, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth, Additional Principal Secretary PK Mishra, and senior officials from government, IMD and NDRF.
The PM had also chaired a high-level meeting yesterday on the subject.
In the meeting today PM Modi was briefed on the work being done by various agencies involved in relief and rescue work, both in India and Nepal.
Meanwhile, two powerful aftershocks today rattled Nepal, adding to the misery of yesterday's devastation in which the casualties soared to more than 2,300 people dead.
The 7.9-magnitude temblor yesterday left a trail of devastation and suffering, with people spending the cold night in the open because of a series of aftershocks that scared several of the survivors from returning to their homes.
A strong 6.7-magnitude aftershock followed by another measuring 6.5 on the Richter Scale today sent people running for open spaces, as per PTI.
International teams, including from India, have touched down in Kathmandu as Nepal declared a state of emergency in the wake of the disaster, the worst in over 80 years of the country's recorded history.
Rescuers have been hunting for survivors under heaps of debris with bare hands as well as heavy equipment though the efforts have been hampered due to fresh tremors, thunderstorms and snowfall in the mountain ranges.
(With Agency inputs)
