Tamil Nadu chief secretary, AIADMK deny delay in flood response

Chennai: A day after Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary K Gnanadesikan sent out a 13-page statement refuting reports on the state’s alleged delay in response to developments during the recent floods, the state machinery and representatives of the ruling AIADMK were clearly at work on a series of damage-control strategies.

Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, on her part, has neither directly taken on the allegations against her, nor spoken to media on these charges that have emerged since the floods hit Chennai.

In his statement on Sunday, the chief secretary said: “The floods in Chennai on December 1st, 2015 was a rarest of rare natural calamity and were not caused by any failure in the management of water releases from reservoirs.”

He refuted reports in some media that the state machinery was waiting for the chief minister’s nod to make important decisions like the release of water from the Chembarambakkam reservoir which led to flooding.

“The engineers present at the Chembarambakkam tank site had taken the required decision based on the inflow into the reservoir. Similarly, water was being released from many other tanks and reservoirs including Red Hills, Cholavaram and Poondi as a result of heavy inflow for which the local controlling officers took the decisions. Hence, the allegation that they were waiting for instructions from the Principal Secretary, Public Works Department, and the Chief Secretary and the imputation that the officers were awaiting the clearance from the Hon'ble Chief Minister are malicious and are canards not supported by the water release data of the reservoir,” Gnanadesikan said.
The ruling AIADMK’s IT wing, meanwhile, released audio and video messages on social media countering and questioning the opposition campaign against the AIADMK and its leadership.

“AIADMK was using technology efficiently to manage the crisis. But at this point of time, opposition started spreading rumours of Amma stickers being stuck on relief supplies being distributed by private NGOs. This was untrue. The opposition launched a false propaganda. We immediately countered this by sending out various audio/video and text messages. We asked people to immediately report to us if anyone posing as an AIADMK representative was troubling them while they were at relief work,” said Aspire K Swaminathan of AIADMK’s IT wing.

The IT wing was continuing to propagate on social media about AIADMK’s participation in various relief and rescue operations, along with countering the negative campaign against the party supremo and her administrative skills.

The opposition parties, however, kept up their attack on the AIADMK. “What the Chief Secretary has said in his statement is a blatant lie,” DMK treasurer MK Stalin told reporters on Monday. “He claims they did not wait for the Chief Minister’s nod to release water from the reservoir. But I have evidence to prove that until now, whenever the government has had to release water from reservoirs, they have done only after getting the Chief Minister’s consent.”