Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said that the ministry of Jal Shakti had instructed the release of water from the dams of the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) that caused severe inundation in large parts of the state, the allegation aimed at holding the Centre responsible for the inundation.
Mamata said that the DVC had not released so much water as it did this year in 25 years.
“Such a huge quantity of water has not been released from the DVC dams since 1999. When we came to power, we used to monitor the release of water continuously. This year we saw the ministry of Jal Shakti directing the release of huge quantities of water from the DVC without informing us,” said the chief minister after a flood review meeting in Bolpur in Birbhum.
Many in the administration believed that Mamata’s comment was aimed at distancing the state government from the DVC’s decision to release more than 2.5 lakh cusec of water from the DVC network on September 17, which inundated large parts of the state.
Police distributes relief materials in various flood affected areas of Hooghly's Khanakul. Ananda Adhikari
“The Centre was harping on the point that the decision to release water from DVC dams was taken by the DVRRC (Damodar Valley Reservoir Regulation Committee), where the Bengal government had a member then. The Centre has been repeatedly saying that the water was released this time following all the regulations. Now, if the chief minister says that the decision of releasing water from the DVC is taken by the ministry of Jal Shakti, she is actually passing the blame on the Centre,” said a senior bureaucrat.
The chief minister said that the DVC was set up in 1948 to prevent floods in
Bengal, but instead it has instead left the state marooned by releasing waters from
its dams.
“This is because the Centre did not carry out dredging and desiltation in the DVC network in the past 20 years. The water-holding capacity of the DVC has come down drastically over the past few years. Earlier, it had a capacity of 4 lakh cusec and now, its capacity has come down to 20 per cent of its original capacity,” the chief minister said.
Mamata said that the floods in Bengal were so devastating this time that in some areas, even three-storey buildings got submerged.
“The areas that escaped flooding were due to the work done by us there.... We will work more to save more areas,” she said.
Senior government officials said that Mamata possibly referred to the World Bank project in the lower Damodar basin to prevent instances of regular flooding.
Mamata added that the deluge that Bengal faced occurred only because of water released from Jharkhand.
“Bengal does not get marooned when rainfall occurs in Bengal, it gets flooded when rainfall occurs in Jharkhand. This is the reason why we get frightened when heavy rain occurs in Jharkhand,” she said.
She said that two members of the state in the DVC — the state power secretary as the board member and the chief engineer (west) of the irrigation department as the member in the DVRRC — have resigned and snapped ties with the central utility.
The president of the DVC staff association, Ashok Ghosh, urged the state government to reconsider the decision of withdrawing the two officials from the DVC saying it would only aid the Centre’s plan to “dissolve the DVC”.
Mamata on Tuesday said that all Trinamool MLAs would spend their local area development (MLA LAD) fund to restore rural roads damaged in this year’s floods.
The Trinamul MPs would spend ₹1 crore to restore damaged school buildings and the remaining ₹4 crore to repair the damaged rural roads.
The chief minister also made it clear that about 1.5 lakh people whose mud houses were damaged due to the floods would be given funds to construct their houses by December.
“In our state, there are about 50 lakh mud houses even though we have helped 50 lakh people to construct concrete houses in the past 13 years under the rural
housing scheme. This year, we will give funds to 11 lakh beneficiaries to construct concrete houses. If the affected people whose houses were damaged don’t figure in the list of beneficiaries, they will be included in the list,” said the
chief minister.
The farmers who lost their crops would also get compensation from the insurance companies, said the chief minister.