Vijayawada: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to sanction an interim relief of Rs 1,000 crore to the State on Wednesday. YS Jagan in a separate letters to Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah requested to depute an Inter Ministerial Central team for assessing damages in the flood affected districts.

He requested the Centre to provide immediate relief to the affected families and restore normalcy by undertaking repairs and restoration of damaged infrastructure. YS Jagan mentioned that the cost of the crops damage and loss to infrastructure is estimated at Rs 6,054.29 crore. He wrote that depression in Bay of Bengal during November 13 to 20 triggered heavy to very heavy rains in Southern part of the state.

Four South Coastal districts and four Rayalaseema districts received 11.1 cm rainfall during the period against the normal rainfall of 3.2 cm with deviation of 255.5%. YS Jagan added that heavy rains lashed temple town of Tirupati, Tirumala, Nellore town, Madanapalli, Rajampet town etc, causing inundation of low lying areas and disrupting the normal life. Inundation in the affected areas was so much that 17 NDRF/SDRF teams and two helicopters had to be deployed for undertaking search and rescue operations.

Jagan in his letter explained that forty people, including an SDRF constable who was on a search and rescue operation have died and 25 others were still reported missing. About 1,402 villages in 196 mandals and four towns were affected. A total of 324 relief camps were opened accommodating about 69,616 people.

Several highways, irrigation tanks and canals got breached and damaged at several places in Kadapa, Chittoor, Anantapur and Nellore district. Agriculture crops like paddy, Bengal gram, cotton, black gram, groundnut, sunflower, sugarcane in an extent of 1.43 lakh hectares is damaged.

Horticulture crops like banana, papaya, turmeric, onion and vegetables were damaged in an extent of 42,299 hectares. About 240.90 km length of road, 59.6 km pipelines, 2,764 street lights, 197.05 km open drainage, 71 municipal schools, buildings and community centres were also damaged, he said in the letters.