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Rains hit five lakh in East & West Midnapore; minister visits spots

Rains hit five lakh in East & West Midnapore; minister visits spots
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kolkata: Around five lakh people were badly affected in major parts of East and West Midnapore due to heavy inundation, following incessant rainfall in the past couple of days.

Following instruction of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, the state Irrigation minister Saumen Mahapatra visited different parts of both the districts to take stock of the situation.

According to the sources in the state Disaster Management department, around 55,000 houses were damaged due to the heavy inundation in the areas, including Panskura, Patashpur, Debra and Sabang.

So far 60,000 people have been evacuated to safe shelters. The state government has set up around 580 camps, where 45,000 people have taken shelter.

"So far around 5 lakh people have been affected and the state government is maintaining a close vigil to ensure security of the people in the area," said a senior state government officer.Adequate quantities of relief materials have been provided and the district administration has been distributing the same among the affected people for the past two days.

Mahapatra said: "It is the water from Jharkhand that is flowing into these areas of Midnapore as it is a low-level area, leaving the people here in a distressed situation."

With no such rainfall on Thursday, there is no report of any more area getting heavily inundated. But the stagnant water is the cause of concern with river Keleghai and river Kapaleswari filled to the brim.The survey to assess the damage caused to agriculture has also been started. Water from Keleghai and Kapaleswari entered the villages spilling over embankments.

However, there is no report of any embankments getting damaged so far. The situation has turned worse as Midnapore received 274 mm rainfall while there was 257 mm rainfall at Sabang.It needs mention that lakhs of people were badly affected just around a month ago with flood in major parts of West Midnapore, Howrah and Hooghly in the beginning of August. Chief Minister had then visited the affected areas, including Amra in Howrah and Ghatal in West Midnapore to take of the situation.

She had then urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to urgently develop a holistic region specific plan to prevent any further damage due to flood as areas including Udaynarayanpur, Bagnan, Khanakul and Ghatal is facing the unfortunate condition of flood owing to huge releases of water from the DVC dams.

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