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The Union home secretary Anil Goswami is scheduled to visit Odisha on Sunday to take stock of the devastation caused by the tropical storm Phailin that struck the state's southern coast near Gopalpur on October 12.
Goswami is likely to visit Ganjam, the district worst hit by the cyclone and interact with the district collector and revenue divisional commissioner (southern division) to assess the scale of damage.
The top mandarin from the home ministry will also take up a field visit to Balsore that was hit the hardest by floods triggered by cyclone induced heavy rainfall.
Goswami will wrap up his visit with discussions with the state chief secretary J K Mohapatra and other highly placed officers. The state government's demand for Rs 1000 crore as advance from the Centre for carrying out emergent relief and restoration work may figure in the agenda for talks.
"I would request you to release an advance of Rs 1000 crore over and above the corpus of Rs 523 crore available in the State Disaster Response Fund for 2013-14. This will help us in meeting the immediate requirement. A detailed report in the form of memorandum shall be presented soon after assessment of the damage”, Patnaik wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on last Wednesday.
Phailin has affected nearly 20 million people in 17 districts, claiming 21 lives. The subsequent floods killed 17 others.
The cyclone and the resultant floods have wreaked devastation to man-made assets and infrastructure and also to standing crops. The kutcha and semi-pucca houses damaged stands at 4,19,052.
Out of a total cultivable area of 3.6 million hectares (ha) in the state, crop area of 6,68,268 ha is affected, pegging the initial estimated loss at Rs 2300 crore. But the loss is far more enormous to the power distribution infrastructure whose cost of restoration and rebuilding has been assessed at nearly Rs 1,000 crore.
