The LDF Government on Monday assured the Assembly that the search for the 47 remaining victims of the Mundakkai and Chooralmala landslides in Wayanad would continue with "all the resources at our command."
The assurance was given by Revenue Minister K Rajan while replying to an adjournment motion moved in the Assembly on the need to speed up relief and rehabilitation measures for the disaster affected. "We have not stopped the search mission," the minister said.
During a nearly three-and-a-half-hour discussion, which generally stuck to the spirit of cooperation, the government's failure to persist with search operations was one of the few criticisms that were raised. Congress's Kalpetta MLA T Siddique, while moving the motion, said the government stopped the search operations on August 14, the day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Wayanad.
"Finally, after repeated requests, search operations were revived for a day, and on that day itself, five body parts were recovered," Siddique said, emphasising the importance of sustaining the search.
Opposition Leader VD Satheesan, too, said the search operations were not carried out as it should have been. "The search for Arjun (Shirur, Karnataka) lasted 72 days," Satheesan said. "Our search operations lasted for just 13-14 days," he added.
The revenue minister, however, contested the Congress' charge. He said the disaster-struck area was divided into six zones, and squads were despatched to each zone. Later, in the next stage of the search, the operations were shifted downstream to Malappuram, covering eight police station limits. These downstream areas were also divided into zones, and search operations were conducted.
"After this, we organised a massive people's search. Those who had gone back to their relief camps were brought back in ambulances and other vehicles to the affected areas. Areas these people pointed to were dug up and searched," Rajan said.
He said that cadaver dogs were airdropped from helicopters onto areas like Soochipara, where humans couldn't carry out any search activities.
To rebuff the charge that the operations stopped on August 14, the Revenue Minister said that five body parts were recovered from Soochipara on August 26. On August 27, one more body part was found. On September 2, two body parts were recovered from Nilambur. A day after, on September 4, one more body part was recovered from Nilambur. On September 30, another body part was found in Valavada.
Till now, the minister said that 231 dead bodies and 222 body parts had been recovered. "The search is still going on," Rajan said. He said that one unit each of the National Disaster Response Force, Fire Force, Forest, equipment team and police had been posted in Wayanad and Malappuram.
Official figures show that 124 people had gone missing. Rajan said that 77 of the 124 could be identified from 155 body parts. "Now, the assumption is that 47 are still missing, could be still buried deep underneath or could have been swept to the sea," Rajan said.
"Perhaps the body parts of some of these 47 missing persons could already have been interred in the burial grounds," Rajan said. This could be so because some of the body parts that had been buried were too rotten to be subjected to a DNA test or matched with a blood sample.