As the Twitter war over Uttarakhand tragedy gains momentum, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday said there should now be a resolve for rescue and rehabilitation process instead of going ahead with petty reactions.
BJP chief spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad asked the Congress leaders and ministers not to shame this calamity of the hill state, which is of enormous implications and sufferings for the thousands of people.
"Today is a day for national mourning. We see the face of people all across the country painfully searching for their closed relations," said Prasad.
"In fact, now there should be a resolve instead of petty reactions upon Twitter by the Congress ministers," he added.
Prasad said senior party leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley would have loved to visit Uttarakhand, but they did not go there for Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde had publicly urged people not to go.
"In a different matter that the provocation for that was the quick visit of Narendra Modi and it did not imply to Rahul Gandhi. But can we deny the fact that the state of Uttarakhand was completely indifferent to the plight of the people. There was weather forecast warning given. Heavy rains stopped the yatra, no action taken. Army not approached for so many days, five days thereafter they reached. Even now, there is no administration as to how many people have been killed
While the rescue operations in the flood-ravaged state are still underway, following the unprecedented catastrophe due to flash floods and landslides, political leaders trafficked the social networking sites with flaying comments.
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Initiated by a tweet from Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari, hitting out at senior BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley for not expressing sympathy or visiting disaster hit Uttarakhand.
Responding on the remark earlier made by Tewari, Swaraj had said that her party leaders feel for the people in flood affected areas and it was the reason that they had kept away from visiting those areas as it would have hampered the rescue operations.
Fifteen days after floods hit Uttarakhand killing hundreds of people and sweeping away numerous houses, the evacuation of all the stranded pilgrims and tourists is likely to be over by this evening.
Over 900 pilgrims were airlifted from Badrinath and 650 pilgrims reached Joshimath on foot yesterday. Rescuers from Army are engaged to locate the stranded pilgrims as well as locals on higher reaches in Pithoragarh.
Small helicopters from the Air force and private sector have been pressed into service to drop food packets to the villages totally cut off. About 200 such villages have been identified.
Over one lakh seven thousand and 600 stranded people have been evacuated from the affected areas so far.
