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All-party meet decides to
set up two committees

Our Correspondent in New Delhi

An all-party meeting chaired by Prime Minister has decided to set up a National Committee of Political Parties to deal with relief and rehabilitation in Gujarat and a Permanent National Disaster Management Committee to deal with calamities.

The decision was taken after a two-and-a-half hour meeting attended by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Opposition leader Sonia Gandhi, Home Minister L K Advani and Defence Minister George Fernandes.

At a press conference after the meeting, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan said the prime minister immediately accepted the suggestion to set up a National Committee of Political Parties to assist in relief and rehabilitation in Gujarat.

The meeting also decided to set up a Permanent National Disaster Management Committee, which would be a permanent set-up whose members would be decided in consultation with the law ministry and others.

Mahajan said that there were no permanent systems to "decide if a disaster was a national calamity or not".

The phraseology, the minister said, "is not based on any law".

He said the permanent disaster management committee has been asked by the prime minister to frame a bill to define criteria for declaring a disaster a national calamity. "That would be one of the first jobs of the committee," Mahajan said.

He said the national committee of political parties would probably comprise "party presidents of national parties". But no final decision has been taken, Mahajan said.

The meeting was addressed by the prime minister, Gandhi and 18 other political leaders. Among those who attended were Agricultural Minister Nitish Kumar, ministers for power, health, textiles and consumer affairs.

Among political leaders who attended were Sharad Pawar of the Nationalist Congress Party, Yerram Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party, Sitaram Yechuri of the Communist Party of India-Marxists, Dr Prasanna of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Sudip Bandhopadhya of the Trinamul Congress and V H Pandiyan of the AIADMK.

While Sonia Gandhi spoke for eight minutes, Cabinet Secretary T S R Prasad made a 20-minute presentation, detailing the magnitude of management, relief and rescue efforts. Prasad told the meeting that 3.5 crore people were affected by the earthquake and the official toll was 14,000. He also said that the total loss was estimated at Rs 13,500 crore.

The worst affected districts, Prasad said, were Kutch, Ahmedabad, Surender Nagar, Rajkot and Jamnagar.

Mahajan said all leaders supported the efforts of the central government for rescue and relief in Kutch. There was also a consensus that there was still need for toning up the administration for better co-ordination between relief agencies, he said.

The prime minister told the meeting that every suggestion will be taken up seriously and all efforts will be made to bring back life to normal in Kutch. He assured them that the government would not spare any effort in carrying out best rescue, relief and rehabilitation efforts in Gujarat.

Among suggestions by various leaders was the need for better means to utilise money. Though no one opposed the two per cent additional surcharge, they said it could have been on a slab basis, depending on the income of an individual.

The Complete Coverage | List of earthquake sites

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