Patna, August 04: Barely 36 hours after the Bihar government gave it in writing that all river embankments in the state were safe, a bund along the Bagmati gave way in Sitamarhi district, rendering 1.5 lakh people in 11 panchayats homeless. Coming less than a year after the devastating Kosi floods, it was déjà vu for all.
Unlike last year, the government took swift measures by initiating round-theclock work to plug the breach. National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel were deployed for relief and rescue operations, but it exposed the negligence of officials engaged in the state’s ambitious flood protection programme.
Early last Saturday, the swollen river made a 100-metre breach on the embankment despite the fact that it was repaired and strengthened and its height raised last year. Several crores of rupees were spent in the exercise. The bund erupted without a cloudburst or any external pressure, indicating that shoddy repair work could have resulted in the deluge.
The breach at Tilak-Tajpur village under Runnisaidpur came a day after the state government’s water resources department claimed that all the bunds were safe. “All the embankments under the water resources department are safe,” the Central Flood Control Cell under the department had issued an assurance in a one-liner tatbandh samachar (embankment news). An executive engineer, incharge of the cell, made the claims at a time when the embankment was showing ominous signs because of the rising water level in the river.
Villagers said the Bagmati breached the embankment between 3 am and 4 am on Saturday, leaving nearly 200 villages inundated and the National Highway 77 between Sitamarhi and Muzaffarpur flooded. Thousands of villagers had taken shelter on the highway while others had stayed back on the rooftop of their homes. The government set up two relief camps and hoped to plug the breach by Monday night.
Chief minister Nitish Kumar was quick to order a probe into the breach. After touring the flood- hit areas with chief secretary Anup Mukherjee on Sunday, Nitish said divisional commissioner S. M. Raju and zonal DIG of Tirhut Zone B. Srinivasan would investigate the reasons behind the breach. He said stern action would be taken against those responsible for the mishap.
“Anybody found guilty of negligence will not be spared,” he said.
The committee will probe, among other things, whether the embankment was breached because of natural causes, sabotage or any other factor.
The villagers alleged that substandard material used in the embankment was the main reason behind the disaster. They said the executing agency, Hindustan Steelworks Construction Limited ( HSCL), which had got a Rs 798- crore contract to build, repair and strengthen the entire embankment under the Bagmati Flood Protection Scheme in a phased manner, had done a shoddy job in and around the village.
The villagers claimed to have brought the seepage in the bund on the eve of the disaster to the notice of engineers, but no action was taken.
No wonder, the displaced residents blew their fuse when some local officials announced that criminals had breached the embankment. A mob roughed up the HSCL engineers and even tried to throw K. P. Sharma, an executive engineer of the company, into the river. The government has reassured the villagers that the probe panel will look into all aspects of the breach.
The breach has given the Opposition in the state an opportunity to hit out at Nitish.
Former union minister of state for water resources and Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Jai Prakash Narain Yadav said the breach was the outcome of the state government’s negligence.
“It is solely responsible for that,” he stated. “I fail to understand how the government claimed till Friday that the Bagmati embankment was safe.” Bihar Congress president Anil Kumar Sharma claimed that the breach was a result of rampant corruption and negligence of officials. “How was a newly constructed embankment breached?” he asked.
The Bagmati breach caught the government off- guard when it was grappling with the spectre of drought because of the failure of the monsoon. After the Kosi floods last year, it had set up a Flood Fighting Force (FFF) to keep 24-hour vigil on all embankments across the state.
The FFF had been deputed at nine places and had been assigned the task of patrolling embankments during the rains and initiate immediate steps in case of any possible threat.
But it failed to notice the vulnerability of the Bagmati embankment. Following incessant rains in the catchment areas in Nepal over the past week, all the rivers flowing through Bihar had shown a rising trend but no extra vigil was carried out on vulnerable spots.
–Agencies