India to install early warning system to detect disasters

Indian Prime Minster Manmohan Singh (C) presides over an all-party meeting focusing on the tsunami disaster which hit the country two weeks ago as India's ruling Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi (L) and former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee (R) look on in New Delhi yesterday. The Indian navy's rapid tsunami rescue missions to Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Indonesia while turning down foreign aid has staked out to China New Delhi's dominant role in the Indian Ocean, analysts say. PHOTO: AFP

Briefing reporters after a four-hour meeting of all major political parties, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the consensus emerged in the meeting suggesting the setting up of an early warning system to prevent further catastrophes like the tsunamis which was promptly accepted by the government.

A committee will be formed to select the best available technology for the early warning system, he said.

Mukherjee said the meeting also agreed on a legislation in parliament for establishing a Disaster Management Authority. A bill for this will be brought in parliament in its forthcoming budget session beginning next month.

The meeting also decided that since 90 percent of tsunami victims in India's southern states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Pondicherry and Andaman and Nicobar islands directly administered by Indian government were fishermen, their houses should be rebuilt at a distance from the sea-shore.