evidence: The Standing Committee on Finance (Chairperson: Dr. M. Veerappa Moily) submitted its report on ‘Central Assistance for Disaster Management and Relief’ on February 13, 2019. Under the Disaster Management Act 2005, financial assistance is provided to disaster-affected states from the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) and the National Disaster Response Fund (NDRF). Where assistance from SDRF is insufficient, additional assistance from the NDRF is provided in case of calamities of severe nature. Key observations and recommendations made by the Committee include the following: [...] The Committee noted that 10% of the annual fund allocation of the SDRF may be used for localized state-specific natural calamities. It recommended that this 10% limit should be done away with and all expenditure towards state-specific disasters should be charged to the SDRF. The Committee recommended a 10% increase to the corpus of the SDRF to accommodate this expenditure. Given the wide gap between the funds sought by affected states and those released by the central government, the Committee recommended an annual increase of 15% (from the current 5%) in the total corpus of SDRF, for the period 2020-25. Further, it recommended that there should be a provision for automatic release of advance amounts from the NDRF in case of disasters of rare severity, to enable immediate relief work.