Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will be visiting Delhi to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday to ask for help to deal with what he terms “a catastrophe.” Nitish Kumar, who is also the disaster management minister of the state has asked that the 2-km wide breach in the embankment of the Kosi river not be termed a “mere flood.”
“It is a catastrophe, an unprecendented disaster for Bihar,” he said. The Kosi river, which over the last 250 years has moved its course from east to west by over 120 km, suddenly covered the same distance westwards when it breached its embankments in Nepal and Bhimnagar in Bihar.
This has resulted in the loss of 45 lives and thousands being displaced. The border districts or Araria, Madhepura, Purnea and Supaul called Seemanchal are in grave danger of massive floods.
According to Ajay Naik, principal secretary in Bihar’s water resources department, the Nepal government will be helping the state government to plug the breach in the river’s embankment. He added that channels were being dug to guide the water back to main river bed.
Sources in the government said that certain construction companies were being considered to restore the flow of the Kosi to its original course.
In terms of relief work, the state government declared that three air force helicopters had been pressed into service. Around 17,000 food packets and have been dropped over the 417 affected villages. Over 500 boats too have been dispatched and 80 relief camps and 56 health centres have been set up across the affected areas.