Guj Assembly's monsoon session begins on sombre note

Gandhinagar, Sep 18 (UNI) The two-day monsoon session of the Gujarat Assembly began on a sombre note here today.

The Modi government, however, had to face flak from the Leader of the Opposition Arjun Modhwadia over the devastating floods.

He said the floods were caused due to negligence of the ruling BJP government. The water from 58 dams was released without forethought creating the devastating floods, he charged.

Congress Amreli MLA Paresh Dhanani charged that the floods had resulted in deaths of 25,000 people. His statement led to furore from the Treasury benches. Mr Dhanani charged that lakhs of cusecs of water were let out from Ukai, Dharoi and Kadana dams, resulting in large scale deaths and destruction to business, industry and agriculture.

In his reply, Water Supply Minister Narottambhai Patel argued that the ''exaggerated deaths'' were bandied about by the Congress.

He said 64 rivers were in spate. And out of these, five big rivers the Sabaramati, Saraswati, Banas, Narmada and Tapi were interstate rivers and huge water inflows were witnessed from other states for which the state government was not responsible.

Speaker Mangalbhai M Patel came down heavily on Mr Dhanani, saying that the Congress should refrain from giving wrong figures.

Later, Chief Minister Narendra Modi offered condolences to Jaswantbhai Nanubhai Mehta and K Ka Sastry, the VHP leader.

The Congress members, too, condoled the death of Sastry saying that Sastryji brough glory to Gujarat with his pen. A Congress member described Sastry as a ''moving encyclopaedia.'' UNI VNB SSS MSJ RAI2023