PATNA, India: Indian army troops helped evacuate more than 120,000 people from floods in eastern India, but more bad weather raised fears that rivers would to continue to overflow, officials said yesterday.
The flooding, which officials say are the worst in 50 years, was caused after the Kosi River broke a dam in Nepal where it originates, unleashing huge waves of water that smashed mud embankments downstream in Bihar state.
Many villagers offered prayers and slaughtered goats to appease the Kosi, known as Bihar’s “river of sorrow” for its regular floods and ability to change course. At least two million people have been forced from their homes and a quarter of a million houses destroyed. So far 55 deaths have been officially reported in Bihar, but activists and local media put the toll many times higher.
Stranded villagers complained of an unbearable stench from rotting carcasses and the United Nations warned of the spread of water-borne disease.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress party, flew over devastated areas by helicopter yesterday. Singh announced an immediate assistance of Rs.10 billion to Bihar for rescue and relief operations and 125,000 tons of food grains
Describing the floods in the state as a “national calamity”, the prime minister promised all possible help to the state to tide over the situation after the aerial survey of the four most-seriously-hit districts — Supaul, Saharsa, Araria and Madhepura.
Nearly 1.4 million people had been displaced by the river waters after the Kosi changed its course and they may well have to stay in temporary camps till March-April next year, according to state officials.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who met Singh a day earlier in New Delhi, said over 55 persons had died in the current spell of floods and over 2.5 million people in 15 districts have been affected. Of them, 1.97 million people were in the four worst-affected districts.
Singh and Gandhi arrived at the Purnia air base by a special Indian Air Force plane from New Delhi earlier in the day and took off in a chopper for the aerial survey. They were accompanied by Home Minister Shivraj Patil and several Cabinet ministers including Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan, both MPs from Bihar.
