Thiruvananthapuram: Former water resoures ministers Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, N.K. Premachandran and P.J. Joseph have held the LDF government responsible for the floods saying that the failure to open the dams on time resulted in the disaster.
The state suffered as it had not joined the Central Water Commission to install the flood warning system, said Mr Premchandran, who ad-dressed the media along with the two others here on Tuesday.
The state government had not applied to join the commission’s standard operating procedures for flood forecasting.
If it had done so, the commission would have predicted the flood and taken precautions. The state has also not instituted a special operating procedure though many other states had prepared it, said Mr Premachandran.
The Indian Meteorol-ogical Department had issued a red alert on August 9. However, da-ms were opened only on August 14. The government could not escape the responsibility by parroting the technical point that alert was not given for heavy rainfall, he said.
Dam Safety Authority chairman C.N. Ramch-andran Nair had failed to do his duty, he alle-ged. Electricity minister M.M. Mani and water resources minister Mathew T. Thomas also should share the blame, he said and reiterated the demand for a judicial probe into the issue.
Even the water resou-rces minister had confirmed that 700 million square feet of water was released. This cau-sed the floods.
Proper warning was not given before opening Pampa and Kakki dams. Pathanamthitta district or Pampa was not included in the red alert issued at 6 p.m. on August 14.
But the dam was opened on the day without alerting anyone when the released wat-er increased from four million square metres to 86 million square metres, said Mr Prem-achandran.
