Alert in Bihar districts, fear of flood looms

Flood-fighting exercise has been initiated on a war-footing to buttress embankments of all major rivers.

 

MOTIHARI: An alert has been sounded from Mahanada to Bagmati Basin in Bihar following meteorological department’s forecast of heavy rain lashing several parts of North Bihar and the catchment area of several rivers originating from Nepal.

Flood-fighting exercise has been initiated on a war-footing to buttress the embankments of all the major rivers. Nitish Kumar himself has been conducting review meetings to take stock of the situation.

The meteorological department has predicted that there will be incessant rain in several parts of the state and also in several parts of Nepal which would cause the rivers originating from Nepal to swell.

The problem can get compounded by the fact that the Trough Ine has gradually shifted from Bihar to the foothills in Nepal. That means the foothills in Nepal would be witness to heavy rain.

The same feeds the dozens of big and small both perennial as well as seasonal rivers originating from Nepal and entering Bihar.

Major rivers like Gandak and even Kosi have already shown an upward trend. The discharge from Kosi barrage at the time of filing this report in Birpur in Nepal was approximately 1.67 lakh cusecs.

Gandak, however, showed a decreasing trend with the discharge level gradually coming down from 1.63 lakh cusecs to 86,000 approximately at the time of filing this report.

Most of the rivers have already shown an upward trend in the month of June itself due to incessant rain that has been taking place ever since the onset of the monsoon.

Districts like Kishanganj, Araaria, Supaul, Madhubani, Muzaffarpur, Sheohar and Sitamarhi have already been put on high alert.