INRnews - Indian Real Estate News

The proposal was cleared at a meeting between senior NDMA officials and Chief Minister Narendra Modi in Gandhinagar on Thursday. The meeting was attended by former Army General N C Vij, NDMA Secretary P K Mishra, Principal Secretary (Revenue) Vilasini Ramchandran, Gujarat Disaster Management Authority CEO Rajesh Kishore and the CM’s Principal Secretary K Kailashnathan. At the meeting, Modi suggested that a research and development (R&D) cell be created at the proposed centre for Disaster Management Force so as to make the latter a centre of excellence in the field of disaster management in the State. For this, the government is prepared to extend all possible co-operation to the NDMA, he said.

After the meeting, a senior official said an NDMA team from Delhi would visit the state shortly to identify the location for the proposed centre. As sought by the NDMA, the government has agreed to allot about 100 acres of land in Gujarat, where adequate infrastructure facilities like airport, rail and road links are available, he said. The chief minister suggested that a centre for tsunami early warning system also be set up in Gujarat in view of the State having the longest coastline in the country.

He emphasised that sophisticated disaster management equipment be manufactured indigenously to suit the needs of each state, instead of importing them. NDMA officials said at the meeting that it had already created as many as eight well-equipped battalions, each comprising 1,000 trained personnel, at the national level and posted them in the most disaster-prone states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh.