Bihar floods: Ministers to visit flood-hit districts, reassess damage

The state government has decided to reassess the scale of devastation due to this year’s flood and make a fresh claim for the compensation to the Centre soon, said a senior officer familiar with the issue.

The drive to assess the flood-related damages in various sectors would begin with the minister-level review of their districts concerned from Tuesday.

Deputy chief minister Tarkishore Prasad will chair the meeting of senior officials of Munger and Patna on September 14 & 15 respectively to evaluate the losses the state and its people suffered due to the current spells of floods.

On the day when the disaster management department (DMD), which is nodal department for crisis management, submitted a memorandum of ₹3,764 crore to the Central team and sought the financial help to tide over the calamity last week, chief minister Nitish Kumar had said it was a provisional report and final assessment would be done after the flood situation improved.

Panchayati raj department minister Samrat Chaudhary, who will be holding review meeting of Darbhanga as minister in-charge of the district on September 15, said all ministers would be doing the similar exercise to present a realistic claim for the damages. Likewise, other ministers would be visiting their assigned districts between September 14-16 and meet the officials concerned.

A senior official of the DMD said they plan to submit the fresh report to the Central government in the next couple of weeks. The volume of losses due to the floods is in likelihood will go up, he said.

So far, the current spell of floods, which begun late May this year, has affected more than 15 lakh people of 359 panchayats of 73 blocks in 13 districts. At least 53 people have lost their lives due to the floods, while dozens of cattle heads died in different parts of the state.

Last year, the state had incurred a loss of ₹3,328.60 crore due to the floods that hit the population of more than 86 lakh living in 1,333 panchayats of 16 districts. The Central government had provided financial assistance of ₹1,255 crore to help the state compensate the losses.

As per the provisional claim made by the DMD before the Central team, water resources department has incurred a loss of more than ₹1,470 crore on account of strengthening of embankments, anti-erosion works and flood-fighting exercises during the rainy season.

The DMD and agriculture departments have presented claims of ₹1,165 and ₹661 crore.

Rural works department and road construction department claimed that infrastructure worth over ₹235 crore and ₹203 crores were damaged.