New Delhi: The Department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs Friday released a report recommending the “largest ever disaster financing corpus” of Rs 2,83,807 crore from 2026-31.
The Finance Commission recommended the incorporation of a restructured Disaster Risk Index, enhanced state flexibilities and compliance-linked grant eligibility amounting to Rs 2,83,807 crore. A total corpus of Rs 2,04,401 crore has been proposed for state-level funds, comprising Rs 1,63,521 crore for State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and Rs 40,880 crore for the State Disaster Mitigation Fund (SDMF).
At the national level, an allocation of Rs 79,406 crore has been recommended for National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and National Disaster Mitigation Fund (NDMF) combined.
The Committee has also recommended that heatwave and lightning be added to the nationally notified list of disasters under the SDRF framework. “This recommendation will directly respond to the needs of the states/UTs which are vulnerable to heatwave and lightning related incidents,” the report read.
The committee has specifically recommended the capping of SDRF releases for states that have unspent balances exceeding the sum of the past three years’ annual SDRF allocation, the report said.
Furthermore, the committee has recommended that the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) initiate a formal review of the National Policy on Disaster Management, 2009, in order to update it to reflect post-2009 developments.
“It may include study analysis of climate change impacts, urbanisation risks, the role of AI and geospatial technology for weather forecasting, cyclone tracking, damage assessment, early warning dissemination, etc. and the lessons learnt from major disaster events since 2009,” the report read.
This review exercise should also involve extensive consultations with all the states and Union territories, scientific agencies and civil society for a holistic approach towards disaster management, it added. The recommendation was made considering the landscape of disaster risk has changed substantially since with climate change, accelerating the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, rapid urbanisation creating new risk concentrations, and technological advances offering new capabilities for preparedness and response.
Fire safety
The committee also took into consideration that the Model Bill on Maintenance of Fire and Emergency Services was prepared and circulated to states and UTs in September 2019, but only 10 states have adopted it. It recommended that the MHA take proactive steps to persuade and support the remaining states and UTs to adopt or suitably align their existing fire services legislation with the revised Model Bill within a defined timeframe.
It further recommended that a time-bound monitoring and review mechanism be established to track progress in adoption, identify bottlenecks and provide necessary technical guidance so as to ensure a more modern, uniform and effective fire and emergency services framework across the country.
The committee also recommended that all major infrastructure and major urban development projects be subjected to a mandatory Disaster Risk Impact Assessment (DRIA) prior to approval, so as to ensure that such projects are resilient and do not create or exacerbate disaster risks.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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