West Bengal flood situation grim, death toll nears 50

Kolkata: Chief minister Mamata Banerjee spent Sunday night in her office in Kolkata to monitor the situation across West Bengal in the aftermath of Cyclone Komen. The Ministry of Home Affairs is regularly monitoring the flood situation in various parts of the country and extending necessary assistance in this regard.

“Over 12 districts have been hit and over 36 lakh people affected by the heavy rainfall”.

She is expected to visit more flood affected areas soon, officials said.

The chief minister took stock of the situation in Howrah’s Udaynarayanpur during the day and asserted her government would aid in relief of the affected people with its own resources as she was not expecting much help from the central government.

Members of National Disaster Response Force have been deployed for rescue and relief operations in the state.

Superintendent of Police of Chandel district Herojit Singh said that at least 20 people were killed in the landslide.

Two teams of NDRF have been earmarked for rescue and relief operations in Village Joumol. Recently while touring a district, she had threatened to beat an officer “black and blue” when informed that the officer was not focusing on relief operations, but taking pictures of the submerged villages.

So far, 69 deaths have been reported from various parts of West Bengal in flood-related incidents, it said. Some of the districts are facing flood situation due to extremely heavy rainfall.

Banerjee said that besides 47 municipalities, 210 blocks and 9,691 villages were affected by the flood due to heavy rains triggered by Cyclone Komen.

The government has so far set up 946 relief camps where 1,19,030 people have already taken shelter, added the report.

A total of five people have lost their lives while 644 villages and a population of 4,80,399 have been left in distress. Banerjee appealed to the NGO s and other social organizations to extend support to rescue the people and provide them relief material.

“They have evacuated more than 1,000 people to safer area and provided relief items such as food, drinking water and medicines and medical cover to over 2,400 people”.

A depression was formed over Jharkhand and adjoining Gangetic West Bengal.

“Raining has stopped in Odisha, but the rivers have been deluged by rain water inflow from West Bengal“, Odisha’s deputy relief commissioner PR Mohapatra said.

On Wednesday also, heavy rainfall is predicted at isolated places in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as well as sub-Himalayan West Bengal and Sikkim.