The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), which had to face flak for its inappropriate handling of the situation arising out of Cyclone Aila, allegedly diverted Rs 25 lakh grant, which it had received from the state government in 2007 to procure equipment for tackling disasters like cyclones.

The civic authorities instead chose to purchase building demolition equipment like pneumatic hammers, mechanised saws and other construction equipment from the state government’s grant.

Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya defended the decision to purchase the building demolition equipment from the fund.

“Earlier, we had no idea of a disaster like Cyclone Aila. Our idea of disaster was restricted to building collapse. So we procured demolition equipment. We have now started procuring equipment to handle disaster like Cyclone Aila,” said Bhattacharya.

A senior official of the KMC said: “We thought that we should procure equipment for demolishing caved-in portion of a building. So we purchased equipment for the building department only.”

Incidentally, the equipment procured for the building department remained unused for two years as it is yet to receive the equipment from the mechanical department, which had purchased the equipment.

A month ago, when Cyclone Aila struck the city, it had uprooted around 1,500 trees and the civic authorities had to hire equipment from private agencies. The KMC spent a few lakh of rupees to hire around 10 cranes, three pay-loaders and several other equipment from private agencies.

Later, the civic body set up a disaster management cell and allocated Rs 50 lakh to procure equipment for tackling such disasters in future. But the KMC is yet to procure such equipment.