Kapurthala/Gurdaspur, August 17

Army and NDRF teams on Thursday rescued nearly 300 people from marooned villages in Punjab’s Kapurthala as relief and rescue work continued in some of the flood affected districts in the state.

Kapurthala Deputy Commissioner Karnail Singh said six teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and Army pressed six boats to rescue the people caught in the floods and all those evacuated have been shifted to relief camps.

A total of 22 villages have been affected by floods in the Beas river due to release of excess water from Bhakra Dam, he said while expressing hope that the situation would improve by Friday.

He said some flood affected people are living inside ‘dhusi bundhs’ (embankments) in ‘deras’ to look after their fields, while nearly 40 people are reluctant to leave their marooned houses and their cattle.

Some parts of Hoshiarpur, Gurdaspur and Rupnagar and Kapurthala districts were submerged following the release of excess water from Pong and Bhakra dams this week.

In the afternoon, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann toured the flood affected areas of Hoshiarpur district in a boat to take stock of the situation.

Mann said the entire government machinery including the helicopter of state government is at disposal of people in this hour of crisis.

The chief minister said the state government has already ordered a “special girdawari (survey)” to ascertain the loss incurred to people due to floods in the state.

Mann assured the people that his government will “compensate the people even if they had lost a hen or a goat due to the floods”.

He said there is no need for people to panic as the state government is there to extend all help to those affected.

The flood situation in Rupnagar district remained grim as more water was being released into the Sutlej river from Bhakra Dam.

The Army is assisting in the rescue operations and NDRF teams are working round-the-clock to prevent breaches and to rescue the people trapped in marooned villages.

Punjab minister Harjot Singh Bains has been camping in the district and is supervising the rescue and relief operations.

The Army and NDRF teams were also assisting in the rescue and relief work in some of the affected areas of Gurdaspur district. Medical teams in the district have been sent to houses via boats to check on people stuck in their homes for three days and those who don’t want to move out, officials said.

In Kapurthala, one person was feared to have drowned in the flood waters of Beas river in Mand areas of village Talwandi Kuka in the Bholath sub-division when he was rescuing his cattle, officials said on Thursday.

In Chandigarh, Chief Minister Mann told reporters that the latest flooding in some areas of the state was caused by heavy rains in neighbouring Himachal Pradesh and subsequent release of excess water from the Pong and Bhakra dams.

The Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB), which manages the Bhakra and the Pong dams, on Wednesday said it will release excess water in a controlled manner for the next four to five days to take the level in their reservoirs to a safe limit. The Bhakra dam on the Sutlej and the Pong dam on the Beas—both in Himachal Pradesh—are brimming after heavy rain in their respective catchment areas.

Last month too, several parts of Punjab were affected by a downpour in the state between July 9 and 11 that flooded vast tracts of farmlands and other areas, besides paralysing daily life.

Mann said the water levels in Bhakra and Pong dams stand at 1,676 feet and 1,396 feet, respectively, and the water was being released in a controlled way.

In Harike, he said the water released from Pong and Bhakra gets collected and added “we are releasing water from there”.

“We are in regular touch with the Himachal Pradesh government and BBMB authorities and we are hopeful that water will recede by evening,” he said.

Mann reiterated that his government has urged the Centre to relax the norms for increasing disaster relief for flood victims.

In Hoshiarpur, the floodwater level in the villages near the banks of the Beas in Mukerian, Tanda, Dasuya and Talwara areas of this district slightly decreased on Thursday.

However, in the affected villages, the floodwater has caused significant damage to the residents’ household belongings. Moreover, the crops standing in the flooded fields have also been adversely affected.

Raminder Singh, the Chief Agriculture Officer of Hoshiarpur, stated that standing crops, particularly paddy, spanning approximately 5,000 acres of farmland, have suffered severe damage in the flood-affected regions.

Approximately 90 per cent of the paddy crop has been adversely affected, he said.

Hoshiarpur Deputy Commissioner Komal Mittal said that the National Disaster Response Force, State Disaster Response Force and some non-governmental organisations are still engaged in the work of evacuating the people trapped in the flood-hit regions in the district.

More than 5,500 inhabitants of the flood-affected villages have been sent to relief camps and safer places. Mittal appealed to the affected people to voluntarily vacate their houses and go to safer places or the relief camps established by the local administration.

Teams of the Health Department and the Animal Husbandry Department are engaged in relief work in flood-affected regions to save the people from water-borne diseases, she said.