Cyclone Tauktae: Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani monitors situation from emergency ops centre

Ahmedabad, May 18: Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani remained stationed at the State Emergency Operations Centre (SEOC) for a considerable time during the last 24 hours as cyclone Tauktae was moving fast towards the state, an official release said on Tuesday.

When the landfall process of the cyclone began on the Gujarat coast around 9 pm on Monday, Rupani reached the SEOC, a central control room in Gandhinagar, to take stock of the situation and guide the administration, it said.

He stayed at the control room till Monday midnight and held telephonic conversations and virtual meetings with collectors and field officers of affected districts, as per the release.

Rupani returned to the SEOC again on Tuesday morning and spent over three hours, during which he chaired a review meeting with officials and collected information about the present situation and the devastation caused by the cyclone, it added.

After reviewing the situation, Rupani told reporters that despite such a high-intensity cyclone hitting Gujarat, the state government has managed to prevent any major loss to the life or property as over 2 lakh people were already shifted to safer places.

At least seven people were killed in Gujarat as the cyclone battered parts of the state and left behind a trail of destruction along the coast, uprooting electric poles and trees, and damaging several houses and roads, officials said on Tuesday.

The landfall process of the eye of the extremely severe cyclonic storm Tauktae, which hit the Gujarat coast in Saurashtra region between Diu and Una, ended around midnight, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said.

It crossed the Gujarat coast as an "extremely severe cyclonic storm" and gradually weakened. On Tuesday morning, it lay over the Saurashtra region near Amreli as a "severe severe cyclonic storm," and was likely to weaken gradually into a cyclonic storm by the afternoon, the IMD said in its latest bulletin.