Kerala floods: Waters recede, people return home, relief ops continue - 10 developments

Train services resumed as government agencies scramble to prevent disease outbreaks.

An elderly man being rescued by relief personnel in Kerala on August 21. (Picture: PTI)

The sun shone meekly on parts of Kerala today, giving the battered state some respite from the incessant rain that have caused the worst floods in a century. However, relief and rescue operations continue throughout the state even as water levels began to recede.

People started returning to the their homes in many part of the state. However, the bigger, though not immediate, challenge is to rebuild what has been washed away.

Various arms of the Central and state governments were in a heightened state of activity over the Kerala floods, with most announcing their own measures to mitigate the suffering of the people of the state.

However, the improving situation across Kerala has allowed the state government to begin de-requisitioning military and NDRF teams from relief measures.

Here are the top 10 developments that took place on Tuesday:

   1.     Rain stopped in most places of the state, and some parts even received some sunlight. Water levels began to recede across the state, allowing residents to return to their homes in some parts.
   2.     Military units engaged in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) work continued their operations through the day. Units on the ground continued to pull stranded people to safety. And the Indian Air Force pressed more of its resources into the operations. The IAF has flown in a total of 974 tonnes of relief material and 63 tonnes of medical supplies, and has committed more medical personnel to the frontline of flooding.
   3.     The Ministry of Finance announced a relaxation of the deadline for filing of GST returns for the flood-affected regions. The waiver was announced for taxpayers in Kerala, the Mahe enclave of Puducherry and Karnataka's Kodagu district. Different new deadline have been announced for the filing of GST returns for different classes of taxpayers.
   4.     The season of heavy rainfall that has hit hard on the western coast of India has prompted the Centre on Tuesday to announce a new cyclone warning centre to be set up in Thiruvananthapuram. The establishment of the centre would be done within a month's time, the Ministry of Earth Sciences said. At present, the region is covered by cyclone warning centres in Chennai, Visakhapatnam and Mumbai.
   5.     Union Minister for Food Processing Industries Harsimrat Badal spoke with Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to take his inputs on the requirements on the ground. She also held meetings with the heads of leading food companies and urged to work as a cohesive unit to deliver relief to the people in affected areas, instead of each company carrying out its own operations.
   6.     The Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs has made an immediate allocation of 89,540 tonnes of food grains to Kerala. A statement from the ministry said this was over and above the regular monthly allocation of 1.18 lakh tonnes.
   7.     The Union Health Ministry is preparing to send four crore chlorine tablets and 60 tonnes of bleaching powder to Kerala. The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) also continued issuing advisories and providing support to the state government to mitigate the likely outbreaks of water-borne and vector-borne diseases.
   8.     The Centre released a total of Rs 600 crore as an immediate measure to the Kerala government for relief activities. Reports have said the Centre is likely to refuse foreign donations for the relief effort in Kerala. This is said to include the UAE's offer of $100 million, which is about Rs 700 crore, and other offers from international agencies.
   9.     Indian Railways has said that it has managed to restore train services on 'almost all' routes that had been affected by the flooding. It also operated 61 special passenger trains and 13 special express trains to help persons stranded across Kerala by the flooding. Of these, three special trains were operated on the request of the West Bengal government and one on request of the Odisha government. Both states have a large number of their residents working on construction and other projects across Kerala.
   10.    The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has announced that it would waive the toll at three plazas in the state to enable freer movement of relief materials across the state. The exemption has been extended at the toll plazas at Thrissur's Paliekkara, Palakkad's Pampampallam and Cochin's Kumbalam.