Parties trade charges on Singur flooding

The flooding of the Tata Motors Rs 1 lakh car factory site at Singur, 50km west of Kolkata on National Highway 2, for the second time this monsoon, stalled work on Sunday too, even as the Left Front's media managers used the mishap to prove their opponents wrong.

The ruling Left Front sought to score brownie points against political parties and groups opposed to the Singur site by highlighting the fact that the repeated flooding of the plot proved the government's declaration that the factory was located on low-lying, marshy land unsuitable for cultivation and not on highly fertile agricultural land as claimed by opponents like the Trinamool Congress.

In reponse, villagers of Khasherberi and Bajemelia villages along the factory walls alleged that the entire area was flooded because government officials had removed irrigation and canal sluice gates for their own purposes.

They alleged the gates used to check spillage from the stream called the Julkia passing through the area, and had ensured the discharge of the water to other streams away from the villages so long.

The Tata Motors site was flooded in July this year as well following torrential rains.

Sources said work had picked up at the site since then, with 100 to 120 trucks being used to dump sand and other construction and landfill material daily at the site.

The effort was not enough to convert the marshy land into a plot high enough to stand above flooding, said Srinath Chatterjee, a CPI(M) worker based in Singur.

Besides sand, stone chips and aggregates, some quantity of cement and iron construction rods and bars were under water, while one large shed and three smaller sheds were filled with water.

A drainage system was yet to be built to drain water from the site.

It would take a couple of days to drain out the water from the site. Work at the project had to be halted after 3-4 feet of water filled the plot on September 28 night, from a small stream called the Julkia flowing along its western side which burst its banks.

The Julkia was hardly 10 metres wide and ran mostly dry through the year, but heavy siltation over the years had possibly restricted its carrying capacity, admitted the administration sources.

Sources in the district administration of Hoogly district said the 330 acre factory area and the 600 acre attached zone for ancillary units were being guarded by groups of policemen moving around on boats.

The Kolkata Bardhaman raily chord line and neighbouring Chandanpur station was also shut till September 29. Indian Air Force helicopters airdropped food, medicines and relief materials in the flooded Hooghly, Howrah and East and West Midnapore districts.

The flooding was caused not by immediate rain but by unavoidable release of water from overflowing dams by the Damodar Valley Corporation, and from dams further upstream by the Jharkhand government.