JOIN USHeavy rain continued to lash Hyderabad for the second consecutive day on Thursday, leading to waterlogging and traffic jams in many areas of the city.
The incessant rain, which inundated over 200 low-lying areas in the city, claimed seven lives, including two infants and three women.
With the Met office forecasting another 24 hours of rain here and parts of Andhra Pradesh due to a weakening low pressure area, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, as a precautionary measure lifted the gates of the Hussain Sagar (Tank Bund) for the first time in history and released 120 cusecs of water into the drains. With the water level in the man-made reservoir reaching its full capacity of 531.61 metres, authorities have evacuated residents close to the drains in Gandhinagar, Ashok Nagar, Chikkadpally and Amberpet areas.
Traffic snarls
Traffic was severely hit with most of the roads under knee-deep water, inconveniencing schoolchildren and office staff. Panjagutta, Somajiguda, Ameerpet, Khairatabad, Mehdipatnam and Dilsukhnagar witnessed traffic jams for hours.
As the South Central Railway cancelled 10 local trains with rainwater flooding the tracks, commuters were left stranded in several stations.
Meanwhile, due to the heavy inflow into the Krishna river from the catchment areas in Telangana, the water level in the Pulichintala project reached 47 metres, inundating two villages in Nalgonda district of Telangana. Even as Telangana requested the Andhra Pradesh government to release water to the Prakasam barrage and subsequently to the Bay of Bengal, the Andhra government has plans to store at least 50 metres of water in Pulichintala, which could be later utilised to irrigate lakhs of acres in the delta area.
However, with 16,000 cusecs of water from the catchment areas of Munneru and Vajinepalli raising the levels in the Prakasam barrage, engineers released 2,900 cusecs of water into the Bay of Bengal.
DH News Service