No respite from floods for Bengal

In a fresh release of water from Jharkhand and the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), already-inundated parts of West Bengal were flooded all over again on Thursday.

 Nine people have been reported dead in the floods, with around 81,000 people affected  across the two districts of East and West Midnapore.

Government sources reported that while an incensed Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee sought an explanation from the DVC and the Jharkhand government as to why this was done despite repeated requests, the state government announced compensation of Rs 2 lakh for every affected family. Mamata, who had complained to the prime minister on Tuesday, lodged another complaint with Union Water Resources Secretary Alok Rawat.

She claimed that on Thursday, the Jharkhand government released 60,000 cusecs of water and the DVC another 43,000 cusecs, after more than a lakh cusecs since Monday, which caused fresh flooding . The two districts East Midnapore and West Midnapore have been inundated since Tuesday, along with Howrah and Hooghly. S.K. Majhi, the DVC spokesman, refuted fresh incidence of water being released on Thursday.  

“We’ve released 20,000 cusecs from the Panchet dam and around 12,000 cusecs from the Maithon dam since Monday. We've to follow certain rules in releasing water but despite high water levels we're not releasing as much as we should thinking of Bengal,” he told a local news channel.

The state government, however, said water released from the two dams under the DVC, along with a dam at Galudih under the Jharkhand government, is the reason behind flooding in four districts .