Shrikant Shinde celebrates Diwali with landslide-affected Irshalwadi villagers

Maharashtra chief minister Eknath Shinde’s son and Kalyan Lok Sabha MP Dr Shrikant Shinde celebrated Diwali with the villagers of Irshalwadi. During the celebration he assured homes     for the families affected by the devastating landslide of July 19 in Irshalwadi in neighbouring Raigad district will be ready for occupation in three months. Twenty-seven bodies were recovered and 57 were missing, and presumed dead, when the search and rescue operations were called off on July 23 by the National Disaster Response Force and other local agencies after the incident.

As per figures given by state minister Uday Samant at the time, there were 228 persons in the village. Of the 43 families in the village, two got completely wiped out, while the remaining 41, comprising 144 persons, were given temporary accommodation pending construction of permanent homes. “The 500 square feet houses for these persons will be ready for occupation in three months. They will celebrate next year’s Diwali in their own homes,” said Shinde, who is Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s son. The Lok Sabha MP, who celebrated Diwali with children of the ill-fated hamlet, was accompanied by Divisional Commissioner Mahendra Kalyankar. The tragedy was triggered by a sudden cloudburst, which unleashed an unprecedented 400 mm rainfall within a mere 24 hours. This deluge eventually caused the entire hilltop to collapse onto the village, claiming lives instantaneously. This is not the first instance of such an incident in the Western Ghats. In 2014, a landslide occurred in the Malin village in the Ambegaon tehsil of the Pune district killed 151.