Union Minister Bhupender Yadav on Monday slammed the Kerala government, attributing the landslide tragedy which killed over 222 people to illegal mining and human habitation in Wayanad.
"It is an illegal protection to the illegal human habitation by the local politicians. Even in the name of tourism, they are not making proper zones. They allowed the encroachment of this area. It is a highly sensitive area," Yadav said.
"We have already constituted a committee headed by former Director General of Forests Sanjay Kumar. There has been illegal human habitation and illegal mining activity in the protection of the local government," he added.
Wayanad landslides: Death toll reaches 222
The death toll in the series of deadly landslides that rocked the hamlets of Kerala's Wayanad last week has touched 222, according to the state government on Monday.
Among the total dead, 97 were male, 88 were female, and 37 were children, as per the latest figures released by the Chief Minister's Office (CMO).
Among the 222 people dead, the bodies of 172 have been identified by their relatives, it said. A total of 180 body parts have been recovered so far from various places, and the post-mortem of 161 of them has been completed.
Ninety-one people are under treatment in various hospitals in Wayanad, Kozhikode, and Malappuram districts, and 256 people have already been discharged, the CMO added in the statement.
Meanwhile, officials said an 18-member team stranded near a waterfall in the forest in the district is safe.
One of the group members told a news channel over the phone that they had found the body of a man killed in the landslides, and it took them two and a half hours to recover him on Sunday evening, which left them stranded in the area. Official sources said the body was then airlifted by them.
"We are very safe," the group member said, adding that the Thunderbolt team of the Kerala Police is expected to reach them soon.
BJP cites UPA-era rule to reject 'national disaster' status for Wayanad landslides
The BJP responded to demands from various quarters, including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, to declare the devastating Wayanad landslides a national disaster, saying that such a concept doesn't exist under Central government guidelines, a policy unchanged since the UPA government's tenure.
Senior party leader V Muraleedharan posted on his Facebook page a 2013 Parliament document in which then Minister of State for Home, Mullappally Ramachandran, stated that "there is no provision to declare a natural disaster as a national disaster."
"The concept of a 'national disaster' does not exist under the Central government's guidelines, a fact that has been the case since the UPA government's tenure. This was explicitly stated by the then Union Home Minister, Mullappally Ramachandran, in a response to a question in the Lok Sabha on August 6, 2013," said Muraleedharan, who is also a former Union Minister.
(With PTI inputs)
