Cyclone Jawad: Here's how India is preparing for the crisis- 10 points

Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba chaired its second meeting with the National Crisis Management Committee ahead of Cyclone Jawad.

PTI

New Delhi: Rajiv Gauba, the Cabinet Secretary of India on Friday (December 3) chaired the second meeting of the National Crisis Management Committee to review the preparations of the state and central agencies ahead of Cyclone Jawad, reported ANI.

Cyclone Jawad is likely to impact the coastal areas, especially Odisha and West Bengal, from Saturday morning and touched Puri on Sunday afternoon.

Here’s a cheat sheet to developments related to India’s preparations for Cyclone Jawad.

• Chief Secretaries and senior officers of Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal and Andaman & Nicobar Islands attended the meeting and informed the NCMC of preparatory measures taken by them.
• Cyclone shelters have been readied and evacuation of people from the low-lying areas is being carried out in the aforementioned states.
• All actions are being taken to stock food grains, drinking water and other essential supplies for the evacuation camps.
• Teams for maintenance and restoration of power, roads, water supply, and other essential services have also been deployed in the affected areas.
• To minimize crop damage, harvesting of standing crops is being done.
• The NDRF has deployed an adequate number of teams in the states that would be affected and additional teams are on standby
• Rescue and relief teams of the Army and Navy along with ships and aircraft are ready for deployment as required.
• Cabinet Secretary also directed that all fishermen and vessels which are out at sea must be accounted for by the concerned States.
• Essential services to be restored in the shortest possible time with minimum disruption.
• Uninterrupted functioning of COVID hospitals to be ensured.
• Public messaging will be carried out to ensure that people in the path of the cyclone are provided with suitable instructions and guidance during the period.

The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) on November 20 alerted about Cyclone Jawad. Soon after the alert, the NDRF started its meeting from December 1 with the government officials in respective states to finalise the deployment plans.

(With inputs from Manish Shukla)