Excelsior Correspondent
NEW DELHI, Jan 13: An amount of Rs.1,31,02,710.42 (One crore,thirtyone lakhs,two thousand,seven hundred ten & paise fortytwo) collected by the staff members of Vijaya Bank for flood victims of Jammu & Kashmir was today formally handed over as a part of Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund to Dr Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) of the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space by MD & CEO of Vijaya Bank Kishore Sansi, who specially flew in from Bengaluru to the Union Capital for this purpose.
Appreciating the gesture, Dr.Jitendra Singh said that the State of Jammu & Kashmir witnessed unprecedented floods in the month of September when on the one hand the entire summer capital of Srinagar was drowned in water while in the Jammu region several villages were totally washed out. The Central Government, on the instructions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, immediately responded to the catastrophe with generous help as a result of which the damage could be minimized but still there is a lot of work to be done for rehabilitation and resettlement.
Even though the State is going through a transition period of change of Government, Dr.Jitendra Singh hoped that during the Governor’s rule also, the flood relief and rehabilitation work will continue uninterruptedly with the active initiative of the administration. For this purpose, he also suggested to the Governor’s administration to take the concerned MLAs and MPs of each area into confidence in order to ensure better coordination and to identify precisely the persons who are actually in need of such help.
In this context, Dr.Jitendra Singh also referred to village Saddal-Panjar near Udhampur which was totally washed out by floods and since been adopted by him for reconstruction. He informed that the hutments built for the inhabitants of Saddal-Panjar will become functional by next week and the village will be developed as the first “smart” village of Jammu & Kashmir within a stipulated dateline of 18 months. Meanwhile, further help, both in kind and coin, will also be raised by him from different sources, he added.