Maharashtra Chief Minister Sharad Pawar talking to villagers at Khillari Village in Latur district on October 3, 1993. (Express archive photo by Mohan Bane)
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Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar Saturday said he had convinced then prime minister P V Narasimha Rao not to visit the Latur earthquake site in 1993 as it would have harmed relief and rescue operations. He also said the response to the natural calamity sowed the seeds of India developing a robust disaster management system.
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Latur earthquake of September 30, 1993, Pawar, who at the time was the Congress chief minister in Maharashtra, said, “After the earthquake at Killari in Latur early morning on September 30, 1993, I reached the spot the next morning. Everything was in disarray. Houses and buildings had collapsed. Huge debris could be spotted everywhere. The then prime minister (Rao) wanted to visit the area. I told him not to visit now as it will affect the relief and rescue measures. The prime minister agreed.” Pawar was speaking in Killari, the epicentre of Maharashtra’s worst-ever earthquake, in which over 1,000 people were killed and around 30,000 were injured.
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“On September 29 (1993), I attended a review meeting of the Ganesh festival. And I then reached home. I had just dozed off before I got the alert around 3.30 in the morning that an earthquake hit the Latur district. I called Vilasrao Deshmukh and Padmasinha Patil and asked them to reach the spot. I reached Latur a few hours later. Soon, the entire government (machinery) was in the earthquake-ravaged area. It toiled day and night. I saw a tired Latur district collector taking a nap in the bullock cart,” Pawar said.
“During the relief and rescue measures, we realised we lacked disaster management machinery. I told this to the (central) government. (Congress leader) Sonia Gandhi gave me the responsibility of setting up a disaster management system. After two years of efforts, the country had its disaster management system in place. Today, we have a robust disaster management system. It has its root in the Killari earthquake,” he said.
Pawar said how his government handled the disaster drew praise from worldwide. ”There were several hurdles, but we overcame them. The government put in its might during the relief, rescue and rehabilitation measures. The efforts drew praise worldwide,” he recalled.
Opposition leader Ambadas Danve, NCP MP Supriya Sule, Sena MP Omraje Nimbalkar and NCP MLA Rajesh Tope attended the remembrance meeting.
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
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