Opposition rejects Chief Secretary’s report

TNCC President Elangovan has said that the explanatory statement released by the Chief Secretary Gnanadesikan is not acceptable since there would not have been any loss of life and property destruction had precautionary notice been served to the people on time.

PMK founder Ramadoss has said it had taken five days for official orders after engineer of Chembarambakkam lake sent a request for permission to release water from the lake. 

He also stated that the Chief Secretary’s statement is full of contradictions. Major reasons for the flood were lack of vision and agility on the part of the government, he alleged. He also posed 5 questions on the chronology of release of water from the tank. He demanded a thorough enquiry by water management experts. 

Elangovan asked if the government wasn’t aware of the water flow from Kanchi and Thiruvallur districts? 

Flood caused by more than a lakh cusecs of water discharged into Adyar caused loss of life and property destruction. Under the centers National Disaster manage¬ment Act, a state body should have been formed. Even though it was formed under the CM two years ago, it had not met once till Dec 2 this year, he noted.

Meanwhile, DMK leader MK Stalin said that whenever there is a discharge from lakes it is mentioned that it’s being carried out on the CM’s order. He showed a sample order on Periyar dam release on 29 Nov 2015. But the Chief Secretary says that nobody’s order is required to let out the water from the Chembarambakkam dam. This is surprising, he explained. 

Refuting media statements that water was released from Chembarambakkam tank without advance warning, Chief Secretary K Gnandesikan in a statement said all procedures were followed before water release was increased in stages, in the first week of December. 

Stating that this was necessitated by the torrential rain which increased inflows into the tank, he said, engineers were at the reservoir throughout the period monitoring developments. 

The tank with a full-tank level of 24 feet started discharging after the Chennai collector had issued statements through the media about the increased discharge. 

Not only that, other water sources were also surplussing into the Adyar river and this swelled the amount of water the river carried, he added. 

On November 30 and December 1, the Meteorological department had sent an advisory about heavy rainfall over Coastal Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

Hence, the allegation that officers awaited clearance from TN CM was malicious, as also the allegation that the State Government had not alerted the people sufficiently was not true he said.