SRINAGAR, 10 December 2005 — For Sonia Gandhi, who turned 60 yesterday, there were no birthday celebrations or sweets. She decided not to celebrate her birthday but instead visited the survivors of the unprecedented Oct. 8 earthquake in Jammu and Kashmir state.
The Congress party president arrived here yesterday and straightaway flew to the north Kashmir border town of Uri to meet the quake survivors there.
Sonia was accompanied during her visit by state Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and Congress party general secretary, Ambika Soni. Her helicopter landed in the Uri town around 3.20 p.m. yesterday and she drove in a highly protected motorcade to the Sultan Daki village which is 17 kilometers away from the main Uri town.
A large number of villagers, whose homes were totally destroyed by the quake, waited for her in the local high school where the authorities had made extensive security arrangements for the visit.
“She walked beyond the security ring to interact with the quake survivors to have first hand account about the relief and rehabilitation efforts made by the authorities,” an official said.
Many villagers told the Congress president that given the sheer magnitude of the disaster that had hit the area, the arrangements made for their rehabilitation by the authorities were “inadequate and insufficient”.
One quake victim, Mohammad Kabir, 30, told her that there were ten members in his family that owned two houses before the earthquake. “Both of the houses have been totally destroyed on Oct. 8 and now the authorities had been offering him monetary relief that was insufficient to construct even one house for the shelterless family,” he said.
Akbar Jan, 45, was widowed by the cruel quake and so was her 26 years old daughter-in-law. “We have no home or anywhere to go. There is no breadwinner left in the family. What the authorities are providing us is highly inadequate even for bare survival. How do we build our homes?” she told newsmen.
