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Sharad Yadav to tour flood-ravaged Bihar

By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi Aug. 3. The Food and Public Distribution Minister, Sharad Yadav, will tour the flood-ravaged districts of Bihar on Tuesday and Wednesday before deciding on a relief package. But for the three flood-hit districts of Uttar Pradesh, he announced today an additional allocation of foodgrains at Below the Poverty Line prices with the rider that the State plug diversions from the Public Distribution System.

This emerged after the Minister convened a high-level meeting with political representatives of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to review the foodgrain requirement in the flood-ravaged districts of these States. The meeting was attended by an all-party delegation from Bihar, led by the Railway Minister, Nitish Kumar, and the Uttar Pradesh Minister for Food and Civil Supplies, Babu Ram. Three Bihar Ministers — Puranmasi Ram, Jaganand Singh and Bina Sahi — also attended.

Briefing presspersons, Mr. Yadav said that the Bihar delegation had sought the same relief for the 17 flood-affected districts as was being given to the drought-hit States and he had agreed with this.

Mr. Yadav also accepted the Bihar delegation's demand for increasing the number of procurement centres for kharif from 40 to 100. The Ministry also supported Bihar's demand for creating additional storage capacity to the tune of 3 lakh tonnes. At present, the State has the capacity to store 5.8 lakh tonnes of foodgrains.

The Union Food Secretary, R.D. Kapur, said that of the 17 flood-hit districts, the Bihar delegation said five — Sitamarhi, Muzzaffarpur, Darbangha, Gopalganj and Madhubani — were severely affected. A population of about 97 lakhs had been affected and 121 persons had lost their lives. Crop on 11.81 lakh hectares was damaged.

In Uttar Pradesh, the Kashinagar, Bahraich and Maharajganj disricts had been hit by floods and a population of 1.6 lakhs was affected.

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