Flood situation here is man made DVC responsible Mamata tells PM

  • | Thursday | 5th August, 2021

The Prime Minister's office, subsequently, assured all possible support to Bengal to mitigate the situation, accepting that "water discharge from dams" caused the flood situation in certain parts of the state. "Kindly refer to our telephonic conversation today on the grave man-made flood situation in some districts of West Bengal due to unprecedented release of water from the DVC dams at Panchet, Maithon and Tenughat," the Chief Minister's letter read. Banerjee further maintained in her four-page letter: "Recently, there has been a low-pressure formation resulting in high rainfall in West Bengal and Jharkhand. Heavy release from DVC dams has led to man-made floods in Bengal year after year. After 2015, the state faced a critical flood situation in 2017, 2019 and now in 2021."

Kolkata/ Khanakul: Terming the inundation of vast areas as a man-made disaster, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had a telephonic conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, followed by a letter, stating that "unprecedented release of water from Damodar Valley Corporations (DVC) dams" led to the "flood situation" in major parts of six South Bengal districts. The Prime Ministers office, subsequently, assured all possible support to Bengal to mitigate the situation, accepting that "water discharge from dams" caused the flood situation in certain parts of the state. With major parts of more than 60 blocks in South Bengal districts getting inundated, at least 1.17 lakh people were evacuated so far from the affected areas where the death toll has reached 23 apart from massive damages caused to crops, fisheries, houses, roads, bridges and power supply lines in Howrah, Hooghly, East and West Burdwan, Birbhum and West Midnapore. Around four lakh hectare of agricultural land went underwater. This comes when the sowing of seeds for paddy cultivation was complete in 60 percent of the agricultural fields in the affected areas. Wading knee-deep water, the Chief Minister visited some of the affected places in Howrah, including Siamore in Amta and spoke to the affected people. She visited the place by road after being forced to cancel an aerial survey of the affected areas due to inclement weather. Returning to the state Secretariat, Banerjee held a meeting with senior bureaucrats and wrote a letter to the Prime Minister regretting that despite repeated requests by the state government since 2015 in terms of the "urgent need for renovation, upgradation and modernisation" of the flood management mechanism of the DVC, nothing had been done so far. In her letter to the Prime Minister she also demanded to immediately build "a holistic regional plan for upgradation and operation" of the dams as due to "years of siltation and lack of proper maintenance, the water holding capacity has reduced". During the telephonic conversation, Banerjee informed the Prime Minister about the indifferent attitude of the DVC in carrying out necessary dredging in its dams as a result of which its water-holding capacity has been reduced by 2 lakh cusecs. "Kindly refer to our telephonic conversation today on the grave man-made flood situation in some districts of West Bengal due to unprecedented release of water from the DVC dams at Panchet, Maithon and Tenughat," the Chief Ministers letter read. Even on Wednesday, DVC has released 40,000 cusecs of water from Maithon and Tenughat. Banerjee further maintained in her four-page letter: "Recently, there has been a low-pressure formation resulting in high rainfall in West Bengal and Jharkhand. Nearly, 2 lakh cusec of water was discharged from Panchet, Maithon and Tenughat dams of DVC leading to severe flooding of huge areas… As you know, West Bengal is a land of rivers. Heavy release from DVC dams has led to man-made floods in Bengal year after year. After 2015, the state faced a critical flood situation in 2017, 2019 and now in 2021." She further stated: "Despite raising the issue to you and DVC way back in 2015, for the urgent need for renovation, upgradation and modernisation of assets of DVC and other allied systems, inter alia, essential de-siltation and dredging to prevent recurrent wrath of floods in West Bengal and most importantly increasing water-holding capacity of DVC dams by around 1.2 lakh acre-feet, the issue still remains unaddressed." Banerjee, herself, had written many times to the Centre requesting to take up de-siltation of Panchet dam to add 100 million cubic metre of additional storage capacity and to construct a ring embankment on Maithon dam to add an additional 120 million cubic metre of storage capacity. She had also requested to construct the sixth dam at Balpahari in Jharkhand as per the original plan of DVC, stating that the issues cannot be addressed "in an isolated manner". Reiterating that Bengal did not receive financial assistance despite "the state being regularly ravaged by natural disaster in the forms of cyclones and man-made floods", Banerjee wrote to the Prime Minister that her government would shortly send the assessment report of the damages caused by the flood-like situation. In a tweet, PMO has stated: "PM @narendramodi spoke to WB CM @MamataOfficial on the flood situation caused by water discharge from dams in parts of the state. PM assured all possible support from the Centre to help mitigate the situation. PM Modi prays for the safety and wellbeing of those in affected areas." As many as 15 blocks in West Midnapore, 14 each in Hooghly and Howrah was inundated. Besides NDRF, personnel of the Indian Army are deputed at Khanakul where power supply arrangements went underwater. Six out of 23 people died due to wall collapse, seven drowned, lightning claimed six lives, two got electrocuted and two died due to landslides in Kalimpong. The state Disaster Management department has sent 2 lakh tarpaulins, 1,800 MT rice and 35,000 garments to the affected areas on Wednesday. DVCs executive director Satyabrata Bandyopadhyay said: "Release of water from dams is regulated by Damodar Valley River Regulation Committee. Chief Engineers of the Irrigation department of both Bengal and Jharkhand are its members. Moreover, there was no recommendation for de-siltation at the dams that needs a recurring cost of Rs 50,000 crore when a new dam comes up at a cost of Rs 10,000 crore". As per the prediction of the Meteorological Department, there is a forecast of heavy rainfall in South 24-Parganas, East and West Midnapore. As a result, the water level in rivers would again go up to make the situation worse. However, Kolkata and districts, including Bankura, Purulia and Jhargram will receive less rainfall.

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