``I promise to implement the Pagladiya and Kulsi projects prepared by the Brahmaputra Board and will also impress upon the Prime Minister to release more funds to meet the challenge put up by the floods,'' she said, on her arrival back in the state capital yesterday.

In fact, the state has been suffering on all fronts, mainly due to the floods, with the Brahmaputra and its tributaries taking away a major chunk of Assam's funds meant for other developmental projects. This is also thanks to the fact that the Centre does not give muchmoney and whatever is released is in the form of loans.

Assam's experience with the BJP-led Government during the floods last year too is not very satisfactory. While Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta pleaded for Rs 500 crores, what the Centre gave was peanuts -- hardly Rs 40 crore.

``Now that you are the minister for floods too, the state government expects that you impress upon the PM the need to rectify the system and provide us grants and not loans,'' is what theChief Minister is understood to have told Chakravarty, when she called on the former here last evening.

Chakravarty, incidentally, is an old colleague of Mahanta in the AGP and the regional party had sent her to the Rajya Sabha in 1986. On the completion of her term, however, the fire-brand lady quit the AGP and joined the BJP.

That the Central Loan Assistance (CLA) for flood control, now in practice, is nothing but an eyewash can be gauged from the fact that while the total sanction during the eighth-plan period was Rs 100 crore,Assam got only Rs 31.69 crore, with the interest and principal getting deducted at source. And last year, when the flood damage was assessed by the state government at around Rs 500 crores, with massive damage caused to standing crops, Assam hardly got any worthwhile sum even after Vajpayee himself came to assess the situation.

``It will be a litmus test for the Vajpayee Government this time, now that an Assam MP has been made Minister of State for Water Resources. And going by our bitter experience of 1998, we cannot afford to be optimistic,'' said an AGP leader. State Flood Control Minister Pramod Gogoi, a senior CPI leader, on his part, is even more pessimistic about the Centre's attitude towards Assam floods.

``The Centre's appreciation of the all-embracing nature of Assam's flood problem and its financial assistance is grossly inadequate. For example, for the purpose of prevention of flood and erosion, the Centre has been sanctioning loans but no grants,'' he said.

Chakravarty, on her part, hasalready got down to serious business and one of the first things she did on assuming office in Delhi on Thursday was to pull up the Brahmaputra Board officials for their failure to expeditiously implement the various projects prepared by it.

She had very strongly hit out at the AGP-led government for failing to tackle the flood problem during her poll campaigns.

But, now that she herself is on the hot seat as floods are concerned, it will be interesting to watch her at work.