Senior Congress leader M B Patil meets CM Yediyurappa
Bengaluru, July 9: Senior Congress legislator M B Patil on Friday met Chief Minister of Karnataka B S Yediyurappa to seek financial assistance for irrigation in drought-hit villages in Vijayapura district.
"Met the Hon'ble CM of Karnataka today at his residence.
Made a request for financial assistance to provide irrigation to the drought-hit villages of Indi taluk by filling 16 tanks from the Krishna River through Tidagundi aqueduct. He has informally agreed to the same," Patil tweeted.
The former Water Resources Minister sought financial assistance also for work on releasing additional water from the Almatti Dam into the lakes and check-dams in the command area of UKP (Upper Krishna Project)-3 to improve the groundwater-level in Vijayapura district.
The Chief Minister's office called the meeting a courtesy call.
The meeting was keenly watched as Patil is a prominent Lingayat leader from north Karnataka, the community to which the Chief Minister too belongs.
There had been speculations and reports in the past that the ruling BJP was keen on roping in Patil into its fold, which he had denied.
The Babaleshwar MLA said the Chief Minister has responded positively to an appeal to taking up the reprinting of "Shivanubhava", a Kannada newspaper edited by Dr P G Halakatti.
Met the Hon'ble @CMofKarnataka Sri @BSYBJP today at his residence. Made a request for financial assistance to provide irrigation to the drought-hit villages of Indi taluk by filling 16 tanks from the Krishna River through Tidagundi aqueduct. He has informally agreed to the same. https://t.co/1IgZuOKzDU
— M B Patil (@MBPatil) July 9, 2021
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Bengaluru: In a significant move towards enhancing disaster preparedness, the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC), in collaboration with UNICEF, launched the Karnataka State Disaster Risk Reduction Roadmap (KSDRR) 2025-2030 on Monday, marking the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction.
With this initiative, Karnataka has become the fifth state in India to launch the Disaster Risk Reduction Roadmap, following Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Assam, as reported by The New Indian Express.
The new roadmap is designed to mitigate the impact of natural disasters and reduce the state’s vulnerability. Over the past five years, Karnataka has suffered an estimated Rs 1 lakh crore in losses due to floods, droughts, lightning, hailstorms, fire, and other calamities. Addressing these challenges, Mullai Muhilan, Director of KSNDMC, emphasised that the goal of the KSDRR is to implement a systematic approach to preventing and managing such disasters.
“The theme on this day is ‘Fund Resilience, Not Disasters’, and that is why this roadmap is a framework of existing solutions to reduce and prevent losses by mitigating floods, drought, earthquakes, heat waves and so on,” TNIE quoted Muhilan as saying.
The KSDRR outlines a multi-phase strategy, which includes a vulnerability profile of Karnataka, highlights DRR developments, initiatives taken in the state, financial arrangements, and defines the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders as per the National Disaster Management Act, 2005.
The roles and responsibilities, work implementation in the road map are based on three major milestones divided to achieve in five years. All departments, gram panchayats have prepared disaster management plans with latest data as baseline information.
In milestone 2 for the year 2027-28, the roadmap envisions that the state has to collaborate and partner with various stake holders from local to global level. In milestone 3, for the year 2029-30, it mentions reducing infrastructure damage, human and animal deaths, casualties by 75%.
“Currently, KSNDMC has applications including Varuna Mitra, dedicated mainly to providing weather forecast to farmers across the state. Similarly, we have Megha Sandesha, a mobile app developed in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science. This app was created to mitigate urban floods and it provides information to various government bodies especially BWSSB, and others. We are still working on this app to provide information and data to BDA, GBA on the areas that might flood in the future. They can use this data before giving clearance to buildings of layouts,” explained Muhilan.
As part of the roadmap, several government departments have been directed to work towards risk identification, risk reduction, preparedness, financial protection, and resilient recovery. For instance, the Education Department will be responsible for developing school-level disaster management plan.
The roadmap also outlines a robust infrastructure for real-time disaster monitoring. Karnataka has already installed 6,500 telemetric rain gauge stations at the gram panchayat level, alongside 850 telemetric weather stations at the taluk level. Other installations include lightning and thunderstorm sensors, water level sensors in Bengaluru and surrounding cities, and seismic sensors at major dam sites.
