Cabinet meeting on September 18

Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh Cabinet will meet on September 18 to review the recent unprecedented floods to Budameru playing havoc with the lives of the people and the deep depression that caused heavy damage to crops in the coastal and north coastal districts of the state.

The Cabinet is likely to take decisions on the issues like the removal of encroachments on Budameru so that future floods can be avoided. It will also discuss the compensation to be paid to the victims of the floods.

As Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu personally inspected the flood relief operations for 10 days and took up the responsibility to see that the relief and rescue operations were taken up effectively, the state government is keen on taking all necessary measures to prevent recurrence of such floods in future. The government feels that certain areas of Vijayawada faced worst-ever kind of floods due to the negligence and lack of knowledge of measures that need to be taken to prevent floods by the previous YSRCP government. The ministers said during the YSRCP regime focus was only on looting sand, wine and land and not on governance.

Though floods are a common phenomenon in the state, the YSRCP government had never bothered to take up either short-term or long-term measures in this direction. Then Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy had never moved out of his ‘palace’ and left it to the officials to take up the rescue operations. He at the most used to make an aerial survey after a week. On the contrary, Naidu spent 24x7 for nearly 10 days amidst people of the 20 flood-affected colonies, they add.

The Cabinet is likely to identify the encroachments on Budameru downstream in Vijayawada to Kolleru lake.

NTR District Collector G Srujana conducted a meeting with the officials of Land Records, Survey, Irrigation, Vijayawada Municipal Corporation and Revenue authorities on Friday to identify the encroachments in the Budameru stream. The Cabinet is also likely to decide on new liquor policy and upcoming construction activity in the CRDA region.